


Halloween Mayhem

by Omnicat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: First Crush, Gen, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 22:46:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6258796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omnicat/pseuds/Omnicat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus goes for the girl and involuntarily causes wide-spread chaos. He’s not pleased. Neither are his friends. Tempers flare, and flare... Will there be a last one to laugh?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Take Your Positions!

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Nederlands available: [Halloween Herrie](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10450995) by [CattyRosea (Omnicat)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omnicat/pseuds/CattyRosea)



> If you're here because you like prominent and well-developed OCs, turn back now. She barely shows up in person. :X

"Are you sure she’ll be there, Lily? I’ve checked the Transfiguration classroom and her office as you suggested, but she wasn’t there."

"Yes, I’m _quite_ sure."

"Are you sure she’ll be alone?"

" _Yes_ , Remus."

"Are you really, _really_ su-"

"Remus, how many confirmations do you need? Tell me, and I’ll give them to you in advance."

Remus hung his head in shame. "I’m sorry, Lily." he mumbled. "I’m just... nervous, that’s all."

Lily shot him a sideway glance as they descended to the sixth floor. She lowered her voice so the small group of second years they passed on the stairs wouldn’t hear her. "Did one of you get into trouble again?"

He looked up wide-eyed, startled from his thoughts. Lily’s face looked worried.

"Trouble? Oh, no, none of us has gotten caught lately - not that we’ve been doing much wrong anymore, of course! Hehe, he. Ahem. No... there’s no reason for concern about our detention records, Lily. The matter I want to discuss with her is more... personal."

That didn’t seem to set Lily’s mind at ease. Quite the opposite, in fact. In his distracted state, it took Remus a moment to realise what she must be thinking.

"Oh!" he stammered. "Oh, no, nothing is wrong with me or my mother either. And Bunny is doing fine. That’s not the kind of personal I meant."

Although he didn’t blush, Lily had gotten to know her fellow Prefect well enough in the months since their appointment to realise that his expression was different than usual. Remus Lupin was a boy prone to look awkward, ashamed, guilty, uncomfortable or otherwise out of place, though Lily could never figure out why. But he never blushed. His pallid face was always just that; pallid. This was a new expression, one Lily had never seen before, and she immediately labelled it as ‘Remus Lupin Expression #089: blushing face’.

He let his gaze drop to his feet when Lily’s eyes widened, mentally preparing himself for the worst, and almost collided with a suit of armour.

"But Remus, I thought your grades were fine!"

Remus didn’t know whether to sigh in relief or groan from embarrassment at the uncalled for loudness of her exclamation, so he did neither. She looked perturbed enough on her own accord, at any rate.

 _It must be James... she doesn’t get it because he’s such a bad example._ "No, Lily. It’s not that either."

"Remus... I’m running out of guesses here." Lily sighed, running a hand through her shoulder length hair. She shot him a quick, tentative glance. "If you don’t have to see McGonagal for your grades or your mother or the guys... then what _are_ you so desperate to discuss with her?"

"Look, Lily - I’ll tell you once I’ve actually _done_ the talking to her bit, okay?" Remus tugged at his collar uneasily. "That way you won’t have to worry about the outcome either, because you don’t know what the possibilities are."

Lily studied his face for a while before she spoke.

"All right. But once you get back to Gryffindor Tower, Mr Lupin, I want to hear _all_ about it." she said, wagging her finger at him sternly.

"I promise." Remus said with a grateful smile, and added under his breath: "Gossip queen."

"Ah! I am not a gossip queen, Remus Lupin!" She slapped him playfully, and they covered the remainder of the distance to the teachers’ lounge chasing after each other. Still chuckling, they slowed down when they rounded the last corner to catch their breaths. Lily turned to Remus and squeezed his arm reassuringly.

"Whatever it is you want to do in there, good luck. And remember - a promise is a promise."

Remus nodded, smiling weakly. "Thanks, Lily."

She waved and sped off.

Remus took a deep breath, readjusted his collar, stopped - _I must be mad, doing something like this_ \- reminded himself of his goal, gathered up his courage, and knocked.

"Come in."

McGonagall looked up when he closed the door behind him. "Mr Lupin. What can I do for you?"

Remus scraped his throat. "I - That is... I - er..." _Damnit Lupin, are you a weremouse?_ After taking a deep breath he looked McGonagall straight in the eye. "This may sound strange, professor, but I came here to ask you if you could tutor me for a few weeks."

As expected, McGonagall’s eyebrows shot up above her square spectacles. "Tutor you? That is indeed surprising, as you are ahead of what you should know and be able to accomplish in my class. And I seem to remember Mr Black telling Mr Pettigrew off once for accepting extra tutoring because, and I quote: ‘Marauders do not, _never, ever,_ collaborate with teachers’."

"Well, it’s... there’s actually only one thing I’d like to learn. How to conjure... certain objects from thin air."

McGonagall’s eyes narrowed. She put her quill away and screwed the lid onto her ink-well before looking at him sternly. "A reasonable request, Mr Lupin, were it not coming from you. Frankly, your record works against you. Lately you have been suspiciously lax in your prefect’s duties."

Almost wincing, Remus remembered the the fight Sirus and Severus Snape had gotten into a week ago; Sirius and Severus had stood facing each other, wands drawn and with their intentions written plainly in the angry contortions of their faces, and Sirius had told Remus to either look away or give him detention. Remus had only been saved from having to decide by the appearance of Alice Longbottom, a sixth year Prefect from Hufflepuf.

"So I will have to ask you exactly what you want to use this advanced skill for." McGonagall finished, snapping Remus back to the present - which was hardly less stressful.

"Flowers." Remus blurted out, before he could lose his nerve. "Amaryllis flowers. They’re her favourite, but they don’t grow anywhere near here, so importation spells don’t work."

McGonagall looked stunned. Remus ducked his head, biting the inside of his cheek. _Don’t blush don’t blush don’t blush, there’s nothing to be ashamed of, you’re just trying to impress a girl, perfectly normal for a guy your age even if you do hold a potentially deadly secret,_ he told himself. He missed the peculiar expression that crossed McGonagall’s face.

"Mr Lupin?"

He looked up. McGonagall seemed to be sizing him up. "Is there a time limit?"

Though he hadn’t exactly expected her to laugh or send him away saying his plan was ludicrous, it was still hard for Remus to believe his own ears.

"Two weeks. Until Halloween." he squeaked.

McGonagall nodded curtly. "Then I suggest we start with something more simple than a flower. Like chocolate. Then maybe move on to stuffed toys, and finally flowers. Flowers are particularly difficult to conjure up correctly, but I’m sure you’ll be able to do it, Mr Lupin."

Remus was only barely able to prevent his mouth from falling open. It occurred to him that his strict, unyielding Transfigurations professor had once been a teenage girl herself.

"Don’t stand there like a stranded troll, Mr Lupin. We have work to do."

Though he found it hard to imagine what _kind_ of girl.

 

"Screwdriver..." Sirius peered under the bed. "Ooohhh, screwdriver..."

He bounced off of his bed only to dive headfirst onto James’s. He crawled over to the edge and peered underneath this bed too.

"Where are you, screwdriver? There’s an immensely beautiful machine in the making just begging to get its screws screwed in and out by you."

He bounced on to Peter’s bed, knocking the pudgy boy over and spilling ink all over his Potions homework, and pauzed momentarily, snatching the rolls of parchment from Peter’s grasp.

"You’re still working on this stuff?"

Peter made a pained face. "I can’t figure out what those other uses of moonstone are! Could you help me?"

"No way, I finished that nonsense a week ago, I’m not doing it again."

He threw down the parchment and bounced back to Remus’s bed on the other side of the room, using the other beds to get there. Peter whimpered pitifully as he tried to save his crinkled and smudged work.

Not having found his screwdriver, Sirius flopped down, crumpling Remus’ bed sheets, and called out: "James?"

No reply. But the silence did make him aware of the suspicious noises that could only come from the Gryffindor boys’ bathrooms, particularly on Marauder Hours. Sirius remembered he’d seen their _‘Keep Out, or Face Our Wrath’_ sign (decorated with enchanted stick figures performing various forms of gruesome torture) on his way up. And now that he thought about it, there was a funny taste to the air.

"OI, PRONGS! WHAT ARE YOU UP TO?"

"Exploding dungbombs filled with paint." came the faint reply.

Sirius was impressed.

"Not too shabby." he mumbled. He somersaulted backwards off of Remus’ bed and strolled out of the dormitory. After a quick peek inside the bathroom to check out James’s equipment, he kept his extremities on the stairs. Unlike James, he didn’t wear glasses, after all, and he didn’t like the thought of getting untested concoction in his eyes.

"Getting anywhere yet?"

"The kitchens, maybe," James grumbled. "I’m starving. But so far I haven’t been able to find any paints that don’t absorb and nullify the smell."

"You don’t happen to have my screwdriver in there, do you?"

"Not me. Didn’t Moony borrow it the other day?"

"What does Remus need a screwdriver for?" asked Peter, who wandered over to them, having given up on trying to restore - let alone finish - his homework.

Sirius smirked and stuck his head around the doorpost to catch James’ reaction. "He wants to fix the Wireless so we don’t have to always listen to what the _girls_ are listening anymore."

He quickly withdrew his head again. A misleadingly innocuous sizzling sound was all that warned them for the explosion that followed. Crystal shattered, tin clattered, ingredients squashed and James screamed. Sirius howled with laughter.

He came stumbling from the billowing black dungcloud, coughing and looking positively horrified. "Fix the Wireless?! How can he - uchah, uchack - do that to me? My second best friend!"

Sirius let out a last bark-like laugh before. "Using muggle equipment to sidestep the magic is an ingenious idea. I for one plan on thanking him if he gets it done. If I have to listen to Celina Warbeck till the wee hours of night one more time I think I’ll go -"

"Where is he?" James looked like a stereotypical demon, black with soot, hair straight on end, frothing at the mouth and wide-eyed. "If I get my hands on him I’ll - I’ll - I’ll take his screwdriver away! I’ll hide it somewhere he’ll never find it again and then I’ll hex him so badly he’ll never be able to come near the Wireless again!"

"Hey! You will not do anything with _my_ screwdriver!"

But James wasn’t listening. He stormed into their common room, looking like... well, looking _more_ like the madman he already looked like.

"Where is he, where is he?! If I find out he’s tampered with the Wireless I swear I’ll..." he kept muttering as he tore sheets off beds and peered under them, threw the lids off of trunks to Summon ‘iron stuffs’ and kicked the circular rug in the centre of the dormitory aside. Sirius could have told him he’d already looked in all those places and then some, but decided against it and took out his camera instead. The new heights of insanity Lily Evans managed to push James to ever since she’d first used her new Prefect’s authority to dock points from him were unprecedented. Maybe it was because James and Lily had already been at war with each other for years before James finally lost his head completely, but none of James’s other crushes had ever caused such extreme reactions, and Sirius was determined to record every twitch and fleck of drool, before the mania died away again and James would return to his ‘normal’ romantic routine. Even if the scientific research didn’t go anywhere, it was something he couldn’t deny the posterity.

The flash jolted James back to his senses.

"Huh?" he said, blinking his eyes. "Where’s Remus?"

"Not here. Fancy looking for him?"

"Sure..." Still dazed, James wiped his glasses on the rim of his shirt and followed Sirius down the stairs. Peter followed them, as usual more or less unnoticed. On the way down, they encountered Lily Evans, who was on her way up. Sirius hardly spared her a glance, but James went into immediate (and by now quite predictable) Evans-overload.

"Lily, darling, have you finally realised you are made for me and decided to make your negligence towards my feelings up by treating me to a naked massage in the privacy of my four-poster?"

She casually slapped him across the head in passing.

"Oi, Evans, you’re not thinking of going where I think you’re going, are you?" Sirius said casually, not bothering to stop his lazy downward sauntering.

"That depends, Black. But with your level of brain-activity in mind, I doubt it."

"You have a point there; my superior way of thinking could very well have bypassed your simple motivations without realising it."

"Ah yes, ignorance is bliss, they say. You must be on a permanent high."

"Indeed. Though it is still beyond my grasp why I haven’t been appointed God yet."

"Try the madhouse, I’m sure they’d love to have you as their God, there."

At this, Sirius finally stopped to look back. "Evans, that one was old! You already used it last Friday during Charms. What’s wrong with you?"

Lily’s frozen back looked caught. "Nothing."

"What are you up to, Evans? That’s the _boys’_ staircase you’re walking up, in case you hadn’t noticed." Sirius said, eyes narrowing in suspicion. Lily turned around to him with a defiant look in her eyes.

"What I am doing is none of your business, Sirius Black. I am a Prefect, in case you’d forgotten, and as such I have as much right to be here as you do."

"Padfoot, leave her alone, don’t you see we have business to attend to?" James said as he trotted up to Lily, arms outstretched. "My sweetheart, let’s get -"

"Away from me, you filthy pervert!" Lily finished with her wand between James’ eyes.

Any other, saner lad would have taken the hint. But let’s not forget this is fifteen-year old James Potter we’re dealing with.

"But Lily, what can possibly be filthy about the physical manifestation of our love? Your body and mine, entwined together for a heated dance, skin to - ack!"

With a pang, James was suspended in midair. Upside down. Sirius couldn’t help but laugh. Lily let out a strangled scream of frustration and stomped off.

"Evans, seriously, what are you up to?" Sirius called after her, managing to keep the snickers out of his voice. James continued his upside-down protests.

Lily halted. "Raiding Remus’ personal belongings, to find out what _he_ is up to. You wouldn’t happen to know, would you?" she added as an afterthought.

"Uhm, no. We were actually asking ourselves the same thing. So you don’t know where he is either?"

"Oh, I know _where_ he is. I just don’t know why he’s there."

"Pray tell, your majesty, where is ‘there’?"

"He’s with McGonagall."

"...say what? Why?"

"My thoughts exactly." And with that, she ascended the final flight of stairs and disappeared into the fifth year Gryffindor boys’ dormitory. Sirius stared after her, wracking his brains for any possible reason Remus could have to visit McGonagall.

James broke through his ineffective train of thought. "Oi, are you just going to leave me hanging here or what?"

"Oh, right... Wormtail, when I say you can, lift the spell." He grabbed James securely around the waist. "Now!"

‘Now’ turned out to be at least 45 seconds later, by which time Sirius’ hold had slackened already and that which he’d hoped to prevent - James falling head-first onto the stairs - almost happened anyway, taking Sirius with it. Cursing Peter, he managed to put James down without any injuries, after which he was joined in his profanities by his messy-haired friend, while Peter squealed his apologies.

"Curses, I was only joking!" James groused. Sirius raised a sceptical eyebrow. "I was!"

"Suuuuure..."

James scowled and looked up at their dormitory door, a dangerous glint in his eyes. "She’s inside there, isn’t she?"

"I wouldn’t try anything right now, Prongs." Sirius said, shaking his head. "You really got her riled up this time."

"Yeah, who knows what she might do to you." Peter added.

"Besides, we were looking for Moony, remember?"

"We found him, didn’t we? He’s with McGonagall." James replied carelessly.

"Exactly!" Sirius said, hitting the palm of his right hand with his fisted left hand. "And we have to find out why."

"Why bother? Evans is already on it."

"Prongs, he’s our friend!" Sirius burst out, beginning to lose his patience. "So what if Evans is curious about him, _we_ have to stick by him when he’s in trouble."

"I wonder why she’s interested at all." James muttered darkly, like he hadn’t heard the entire second half of what his friend had said. "Hey, you don’t think she fancies him, do you?"

The idea was ridiculous. So ridiculous, Sirius let out a bark-like laugh, despite his annoyance. "Fancy Remus? You must be joking."

"I’m not joking! What if it’s true? They do spend an awful lot of time together..."

"Well obviously! They’re Gryffindor’s prefects!"

"Exactly! What if they develop some kind of romantic attraction toward each other?"

Peter beat Sirius to saying it: "James, you’re being paranoid."

James scowled. "Well, if that’s what you think of me, I’m going to play Quidditch. Alone!" He drew his wand, a malicious smile on his face. _"Accio broom!"_

A horrified shriek arose from their dormitory before the door burst open and James’ broom emerged.

"POTTER!"

James plucked his broom from the air and headed off, smirking.

"James! Hey, James!" Sirius called after him. _"Prongs!"_ He turned to Peter when he got no reply. "Can you believe this guy?!"

Peter shook his head, not knowing what to say. Sirius raged on for a while, making Peter cower and wish he could turn to his rat form then and there, before calming down. He took a deep breath, mumbled something about karma, and pasted a big, goofy grin on his face which he turned to Peter, scaring him even more.

"What do you say? Let’s go find Moony!"

"A - are you sure?" Peter squeaked.

"Of course I am! We can’t let him stay with McGonagall, who knows what he has to endure even now."

"But what if he _wants_ to be with McGo-"

Sirius looked at him oddly. "What are you saying? He’s a Marauder, there’s no way he would voluntarily spend time with a teacher."

Peter mumbled something.

"What was that?"

"N - nothing."

"Nonsense. Tell up." Sirius barked, making Peter flinch.

"I said: Maybe he has a crush on McGonagall!"

That idea was even more ridiculous than the idea of a girl fancying Remus. But this time Sirius did not laugh; he was too disgusted.

"What in the world gave you that idea?!"

The pudgy boy blushed to the very roots of his hair. "Well, I - that is, it’s not like - I, uhm..."

Sirius flinched away from him. "You sick, sick mind!"

Peter’s eyes almost bulged from his head. "But - I didn’t say - I was only five!"

"Please don’t tell me. I don’t want to know." Sirius said, rubbing his temples. Now that he was forced to think about it, he had to admit that it _was_ a possibility... even though the mental imagery did make him slightly nauseous.

Remus wasn’t exactly known for his romantic endeavours with the young Hogwards witches. Though they flocked around him in numbers that made Sirius, James and the few Casanovas that would still try to best them see green with envy, they seemed to be more interested in him as ‘a friend’. Whenever Sirius complained about the fact that Remus had all these girls for the taking and didn’t do anything to exploit the opportunity, he would explain that the only reason they hung around him was that he was such a good _friend_. Apparently, he was polite, funny in a way that was delightfully civiliced for a teenage boy, a good listener, _great_ at giving the kind of advice that was hard to come by if you were female and didn’t have any older brothers, but no boyfriend material. Sirius thought Remus was not nearly as displeased by this as he should be, and had even wondered if his friend might be homosexual.

He doubted that, though. Remus’ shyness when it came to girls probably had the same cause as all his other anti-social quirks. But even if he was one of the most dangerous Dark magical creatures in existence and as such doomed to a life of prejudice and resentment, that didn’t mean he could just turn his back on girls his own age and look to the likes of McGonagall instead!

Sirius pinched the bridge of his nose and clenched his eyes shut, trying to get rid of the disturbing images. Okay, so Remus would never do that. He was probably serving some kind of detention. But the Marauders had an agreement to always tell the others when they got themselves into trouble; it was part of their pact, one of the things that made them such close friends. Evidently, Remus hadn’t taken the Two-Way mirror with him, as Sirius and James had used it during their last (separate) class, and neither of them had seen Remus since.

It could only mean that Remus was being noble. Sirius made a face. Remus had been forbidden to act in any way selfless for at least a month, after an anti-Slytherin campain gone wrong that landed him in solitary detention with Slughorn every night for a week. It seemed the Marauders would have to up the punishment _they_ had set him in return.

An adamant glint was in Sirius’s eyes as he looked up. "We’re going to save Remus from himself."


	2. And Lose Them Again...

Peter wrung his hands nervously, squeaking: "Uhm, Sirius?"

"We’re on a mission, Wormtail, call me Padfoot. We didn’t go through the trouble of coming up with cool yet appropriate nicknames for nothing, did we?"

"Eh, alright... Are you sure this is a good idea, _Padfoot_?"

"I see no reason to answer you, as you have already done so yourself."

"Huh?"

"I am Padfoot. The infamous Sirius Black. _Of course_ I’m sure!"

Peter groaned.

"Now, are you ready?"

Peter groaned more tragically.

"Great! On my cue, wait till I give you the all-clear sign."

Peter groaned some more as Sirius slipped from their alcove and disappeared into the crowd clotting the Great Hall. He waited, his eyes darting from side to side and his ears strained, until the telltale sign of an exploding dungbomb resounded, indicating that Sirius had found a suiting Slytherin victim: one with an open book bag. Peter lingered in the safety of the shadows briefly, pretending to occupy himself with the useless question of whether the victim had been naive enough to walk around with an open book bag, or that Sirius had had to use one of those nifty magical tricks the mastery of which kept evading Peter, to get the bomb in. But the screams that arose at the bottom of the grand staircase quickly reminded him that he still had work to do; phase two of the plan depended solely on him. He had to keep up the honour of the Marauders, and Marauders simply did not do half-assed decoys.

Sirius would skin him alive if he messed up.

So Peter stepped out of his safe alcove to do as he was told, for the greater good. For the glory of the Marauders. Meanwhile, Sirius ran like the wind.  
  
  
  
"That won’t do, Mr Lupin. Try again."

"Like this?"

"Try to put more power into your thrust, and then let it slide out smoothly."

His ear pressed against the wood of the door and his wand against his free temple, Sirius shook with silent laughter. Using this particular eavesdropping spell (a specially modified, highly sensitive one James had learned from his father, and which Sirius had used to replace the standard spell with once the conversation had turned so suggestive), he could hear perfectly well that nothing more physical than wandwaving was going on inside the teachers’ lounge. But if only they realised how lewd their choice of words sounded...

"No, no, Mr Lupin, be careful! Control yourself, or you’ll poke an eye out with that thing."

Sirius straightened, steeling himself. As fun as his current activity was, and as much bribing material on McGonagall he could gather, he only had limited time until Wormtail would be caught. He felt his face to make sure his expression was really as serious as he needed it to be, heaved a deep breath, took a step back, and threw himself against the door.

"Professor, someone ignited a dungbomb in the Great Hall!" he exclaimed as he burst into the room.

Remus looked like he was caught with his hand in the cooky jar, but Sirius didn’t have eyes for his friend; McGonagall had welcomed him with the tip of her wand. Sirius only barely managed to get his hands into the air, instead of around his own wand.

_Easy there, don’t get too paranoid now, I’m not a Death Eater, I swear, I’m just a cocky Gryffindor punk who doesn’t know what’s good for him,_ he told his teacher with his wide eyes, inching backwards bit by bit all the while. McGonagall quickly regained her composure.

"Oh, it’s you, Mr Black. You startled me. Please refrain from doing that again, I would not like to be held responsible for the possible consequences. Dungbomb?" she asked sharply. "Now why would _you_ come running to a teacher to report a dungbomb explosion, Mr Black?"

"Because I wasn’t the one who set it off!" He stomped his foot in frustration and continued venomously: "Honestly professor, the whole situation looked highly unstable. Whoever did this was an amateur. I saw at least one Slytherin firsty go down, so there might be casualties."

"Oh, spare me." McGonagall said in a clipped tone. She waved her wand to clear the table she and Remus had been working at and stood up.

"But professor, what about -" Remus sounded almost desperate.

"We’ll continue this later, Mr Lupin. I’ll let you know when. Practice in the mean time." she said as she brushed past Sirius in the doorway. The black-haired boy looked after her and turned to his friend once she was out of sight, dropping his envious act in favour of a wide grin. The grin fell a little when he noticed the lost-bordering-on-finding-the-way-back-through-anger look on Remus’s face.

"Oh no, I was too late! You’ve already succumbed to the humorlessness and have become a goody two shoes of a teachers’ pet." He sunk to his knees and buried his hands in his hair, wailing tragically.

"What the Hell did you do that for, Padfoot?" Remus all but shouted.

His tone of voice startled Sirius. Remus yelling: _bad._ Remus cussing: _bad._ Remus looking like he was trying to look not livid: _bad._ Remus looking the exact opposite of grateful: _bad._ Remus calling him Padfoot: _good._ Conclusion: _inconclusive._

"Saving your sorry arse, that’s what!"

"Who said my arse needed saving?"

Sirius stared at his friend in disbelief. "Do you mean you think it didn’t? Good grief, I really was too late."

Remus looked like he wanted to jam his wand into Sirius’s gut. Luckily, all he did was glare daggers at Sirius, who knew from experience that Remus was stronger than he looked. But Remus was too kind and controlled to take his anger out on another, a fact Sirius was also well aware of and gladly exploited (even though he did think his friend could use some loosening up, and that getting into a Muggle style duel would do the trick wonderfully). It was for his own good, after all.

"Alright, have it your way. No fooling around." Sirius said, getting to his feet. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked Remus in squarely in the eye, his impression deadly serious. "What the Hell were you doing and why was it so bloody important that you’d act like this?"

Remus mouth opened and closed a few times before he managed to actually speak. "That’s none of your business."

"I want to know why you didn’t want me to save you, so it _is,_ Moony. Do you have any idea what’s going on downstairs? We did that to save you!"

"I never asked you to save me! You call this saving? I’ll never be able to pull this off again..." Remus looked like Sirius had stolen his life raft during a raging storm at open sea, his anger disintegrating slowly and gradually being replaced by panic.

By now, Sirius was fairly convinced that Remus hadn’t been with McGonagall for a detention. Being too much of a Gryffindor for his own good was something Remus didn’t have to ‘pull off’. It was more of an annoying habit, one Sirius, James and Peter couldn’t seem to break no matter how often they took him out ‘maraudering’. Not unlike Lily before him, Sirius went down a list of possible explanations and discarded them all. That left him with only one option...

"Remember the Code, Moony." he said in a steely, unyielding voice. "We are the Marauders. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs will as such keep no secrets from one another. They will tell their _friends_ when something is bothering them and they will listen when they are told things by said _friends_." Sirius looked at Remus pointedly.

Remus gave him a tortured look before diverting his gaze in shame and running a hand through his hair. "I invoke the _constitutional_ right to privacy."

"Denied on the ground that I deem you to be of unsound mind when it comes to your own best interests."

"It has nothing to do with the Marauders, Sirius..." From murderous to pleading in less than two minutes. See, that’s what Sirius liked so much about Remus. They filled up the lapses in each other’s common sense. Though he had to admit that Remus made up for more non-existent common sense in Sirius and James that they’d ever be able to return.

Unfortunately, Remus’s gaps were a bit more dangerous than their’s. Sirius deemed it time to play it dirty.

"Don’t run away, Remus. We’re your friends, we won’t hurt you. I just want to help." he said in a quiet voice.

Remus bowed his head, muttering: "Bastard..." Sirius grinned, confident Remus remembered that he usually took that word as a compliment. "Damnit Sirius... like this isn’t hard enough already without..."

"Trust me, it’ll be easier once you’ve ’fessed up."

"No it won’t," Remus muttered darkly. "Sure, you and James are my friends, but I _know_ you guys..."

"You broke the rules, didn’t you?" Sirius deadpanned.

"To Hell with the rules, I’m a Marauder!"

Opportunism! Was there hope for him still? "Now now Moony, you know those rules were put in place for your own wellbeing. We didn’t punish you for taking Slughorn’s blame all by yourself because we thought you deserved any more detentions."

Remus looked at him oddly.

"What, did I say something wrong?"

"You’re not here for _that_ , are you?"

Sirius raised an eyebrow, earning him a humourless chuckle.

"Padfoot, I’m really not stupid enough to make arrangements behind your backs with those restrictions still in effect. I told you, this has nothing to do with the Marauders." Remus said, and muttered bitterly, almost as an afterthought: "Except that they ruined it."

To say Sirius had not expected this would be an understatement. Something not related to the Marauders? It was unthinkable! What else did Remus (and, similarly, Sirius himself) have? Other friends? Hardly. Of course they were popular - Merlin knew Sirius and James might kill half the school if they announced breathing was uncool - but only the Marauders, the werewolf and the three unregistered Animagi, were _real_ friends to them. Family? Remus felt like a burden to them, Sirius couldn’t stand the thought of his. Girlfriends? Like Sirius didn’t know what _those_ were like. Good for some entertainment every once in a while, but compared to the Marauders, they weren’t worth a knut. It couldn’t be...

"Please don’t tell me you have a crush on McGonagall." Sirius said faintly, turning a little green.

" _What_... Ugh - ew! What gave you that idea?!"

"Wormtail." Sirius answered distractedly, his gaze drifting from Remus’s face to the table. "There was stuff on the table - chocolates and weird goo... chocolates, Remus!"

Remus’s complexion blanched from his usual sickly-pale to pale-as-death. "Those were for me, not for her! She’d conjured them because I couldn’t make it work."

Sirius let out a strangled sound and fled the room.

"H - hey!"

Remus grabbed his wand and went after him. Sirius was nowhere to be seen in the hallway, but Remus could hear what sounded like the pounding of canine feet some distance away and set off into the direction they coming from - or rather, were going in. When he rounded a corner a hand suddenly fell over his mouth, followed by another one on his shoulder that slid across his chest, drew the matching arm around him and roughly pulled him onto the shadows, against something soft-yet-firm. Panic flashed through Remus at the thought of what this could be - a Death Eater out for a hostage, a monstrous mutated bed of fungus, an equally murderous magical tapestry, a big scary humanoid thing, a big scary insectoid thing, a big scary amphibian thing, Peeves, a Slytherin gorilla, Sirius Black... He realised he was pressed to someone’s chest when he was dragged through a hole in the wall that seemed to have (and probably really had) appeared out of nowhere, and ended up in what he immediately recognized as a secret passageway.

"Mhm-hwuw!"

The hands disappeared suddenly and reappeared in the blink of an eye, now pinning Remus to the wall by the shoulders. Stars shot across Remus’s vision when his head collided with the bare stone.

"Agh! What was that for?! Gerrof -"

But when he tried to break free, Sirius slammed him into the wall again.

"Moony, listen to me. I want you to calm down, think hard and answer me carefully, okay?" Sirius said, wide-eyed and looking more than a little crazed. "Is it in any way possible that McGonagall might have a crush on _you_? Because that would be very _bad_ , Remus. Think of all the wrinkles she could be hiding beneath those robes! You have to be careful! Stay away from her!"

"Padfoot... Sirius, for the love of God, pull yourself together! I _asked_ her to conjure those chocolates - no wait, that came out all wrong -"

Sirius abruptly pulled his hands away from Remus. "So you _are_ -"

" _No!_ If you’d just let me finish my sentences for once, you’d -"

"Oh, so now you _do_ want to talk?"

"If it’ll keep you from jumping to conclusions like this, then yes, I’ll tell you all you bloody want to hear! Do you still want me to say my secret hobby is dressing up like Celina Warbeck and reciting her oeuvre to the stars above in the middle of a moonless night? This is your chance."

_No! Padfoot, get a grip, he’s trying to trick you! Such a good student..._ "Maybe another time, mate." Sirius said laboriously, inwardly groaning in disappointment. "You’re not trying to change the subject, are you? What do you have to hide, my dear Moony?"

"It’s not... I don’t ‘have something to hide’, it’s just..." Remus took a deep breath and opened his mouth to finally tell Sirius everything, when -

"She’s forcing you to stay silent? Oh Merlin, now what do we do? Dumbledore will surely be on her side, and who else that’s in any situation to offer protection would believe _us_?"

"You’re doing it on purpose! You’re twisting my words so you can drag a confession out of me!"

Sirius sighed. "Of course I am, Remus. I’m Padfoot, the infamous Sirius Black, remember? Now tell me, what were you and old McGrumpy doing?" he said with a menacing grin on his face, leaning in close to the already squirming Remus. He rested one hand against the wall next to Remus’s head and took out his wand with the other. "Don’t make me make you, Moony. I don’t know if I’d be able to... _control_ myself."

Remus’ eyes widened. "You wouldn’t."

Sirius smirked. "Oh, I would."

"Using such spells is an unforgivable act, Padfoot."

"I can do it by hand if you like that better? After all, I’ve already gone this far in harassing you, going just a little further wouldn’t do much more harm. For me, at least."

At that moment, Remus did a very stupid thing: he ducked beneath Sirius’s outstretched arm and ran. Or rather, tried to run. Before he managed to take more than five steps, he was thrown to the ground. A weight settled on his back, preventing him from defending himself against the onslaught of tickling that followed. It was a good thing that they were in a secret hallway where no-one could hear him scream.

"Do you give up?" Sirius dug his hands into his friend’s sides mercilessly. "Or do you want more?"

"Stop, stop, stop! Aaaaggghaiihaha!"

Sirius stopped. "So you surrender?"

"Never." Remus panted, and made a brave but foolish attempt to escape. Sirius sighed, planted his weight more firmly on Remus’s back, and continued.

"Alright, alright, I give up!"

"Good boy." Sirius straightened and pulled Remus up by the scruff, holding on tight just in case. "Now, do tell."

Remus looked like he wanted to die and mumbled something.

"Come again? I didn’t quite hear you."

Remus mumbled again.

Sirius frowned. "Come _again_? I’m sure I didn’t just hear that."

Remus repeated his earlier words through gritted teeth. Sirius soundlessly formed the words for himself as if to taste their authenticity.

"Impossible." he concluded.

"And why is that?" Remus hissed venomously.

"You’re Remus! Remus doesn’t interact romantically with girls! Girls don’t interact romantically with Remus! Why would girls be romantically interested in Remus?"

Later, Sirius would realise this had been where he crossed the line. No, not later as in ‘when Remus looked like he’d been slapped across the face’ or ‘when Remus’s hurt expression was replaced by a very, very angry one’ or ‘when Remus punched Sirius in the eye, completely taking Sirius by surprise, because Sirius hadn’t thought Remus would ever use such force against him’ or ‘when Remus stormed off without another word, despite Sirius’s confused and frustrated shouts’ or even ‘when Sirius decided to go save Wormtail after wracking his brains for what felt like hours, trying to figure out what had made Remus so angry’. No, only much, much later.  
  
  
  
Dinner, which was usually one of the moments Sirius treasured most about the days in Hogwarts, was less than pleasant. When he approached James at the Gryffindor table, the bespectacled boy narrowed his eyes and demonstratively concentrated on his stew.

"Prongs?"

Smack, chew, gulp.

"Oi, Prongs! I’m talking to you! Remember me, Sirius Black? Your best friend?"

James finally looked up. "Did someone die while I was out?" he drawled, in that distinctive Leave Me Alone If It’s Something Less Than All Out Murder tone of voice.

"Are you kidding? That’s not funny, you know, with all that Death Eater activity as of late... No, but I figured out what’s going on with Remus, and -"

"Not interested." James said loudly, and returned to his food. When Sirius persisted in trying to get him to respond, he unceremoniously interrupted two of his fellow Quidditch players and joined in on their conversation. Sirius felt like hitting him over the head with a troll’s club.

The feeling intensified when Remus, too, ignored his very existence and chose to focus on a rather girly sounding conversation of Lily Evans and Friends rather than Sirius.

Almost pulling his hair out in frustration, Sirius sat down to eat all by his pretty lonesome, feeling dejected. He wished Madam Pomphrey had let Peter out of the Hospital Wing. Then he would have at least had someone to rant at. When he finally couldn’t take it anymore (after three bites), he injected himself in between a group of third year girls to boast about how he’d planned the stunt in the Great Hall that afternoon, where one of their fellow Gryffindors had run around shoving paint-filled dungbombs into people’s faces as they ran away from the first explosion’s odour, and had subsequently gotten pummelled and jinxed into a quite disgusting looking pulp.  
  
  
  
By the time the students headed for bed, James personally came up to Sirius: he’d heard about the paint-dungbombs.

"Did they work?" he whispered excitedly. As they were in their own dormitory, there was no need to whisper, but it seemed to fit the subject of conversation. "Who’d you manage that, mate?"

"They didn’t work. Wormtail said there was hardly any smell at all. But that wasn’t the intention; I was out for the mess." Sirius said with a grin, all grief forgotten. He proceeded to explain the whole scheme to James - much to their mutual amusement - and following from that, told him what he had discovered about Remus’s mysterious business.

James looked stunned. "Bloody Hell mate, why didn’t you tell me that before?"

"I tried to, but you wouldn’t listen." Sirius answered dryly.

James grimaced. "Yeah, sorry about that..."

"Don’t worry about it, lots of people have days like that. You must have been infected by Lily and Moony." Sirius raised his voice at those last words so Remus, who just entered the dorm, hair still damp from his shower, would certainly hear. The werewolf scowled at them and climbed into bed, pulling the curtains closed.

"Aw, Moony, come on. You know we don’t mean anything by it." James said soothingly, walking over to his friend’s bed. He peered inside through the crack in the curtains. "But you have to admit it’s bizarre. I mean, _you,_ courting a _girl_!"

Before Sirius could utter a warning, Remus’ fist shot out for the second time that day. The curtains were yanked closed more thoroughly and then spelled shut, while James scrambled to keep his footing, clutching his cracked glasses.


	3. Regroup ASAP

"Are you sure there’s nothing going on with you guys?" Lily asked, sending sideway glances towards James and Sirius at the breakfast table.

"Yes, quite." Remus answered icily.

"Would you mind telling me where Potter and Black got those spectacular bruises from, then? As far as I know, black eyes don’t spontaneously pop up with no reason. Even in the wizarding world"

"Well, in fact, I know of this one jinx which causes victims to receive a punch in the face every time they utter a certain trigger word..."

"Such a spell would still have to be cast by someone." Lily pointed out. She’d wonder about how and why he knew such a jinx later.

Remus shoved a stack of pancakes into his mouth, took plenty of time to chew and swallowed thickly, before answering in a flat voice: "Me."

It took a few seconds before his words - well, one word - sank in, and then Lily’s mouth fell open. "Wha - But Remus... why?"

"They -" Remus avoided her gaze. What could he answer to that? Now that the grim satisfaction had ebbed away and his own knuckles were aching, he felt highly immature. But then he remembered what they’d done to make him act like that, and he scowled. "They ticked me off. They _really_ ticked me off."

Lily watched him carefully, biting her bottom lip to keep from saying something along the lines of ‘They finally turned on you too, huh?’, because he seemed honestly upset. Oh, he was trying to hide it, of course, but Lily was an observant girl; she knew that anger was only a cover-up for him. Remus didn’t have an angry bone in his body. He had to use prosthetics.

"They must have done something really bad, then." she said, placing a tentative hand on his arm. He stiffened and looked away as far as he could without sitting backwards in his chair. "Would you like to talk about it?"

"Not here." he mumbled, standing up. Lily nodded in understanding. He led Lily out of the Great Hall without another word, pointedly ignoring James and Sirius as he passed them and they put down their cutlery to stare after him. Severus looked at them sharply when they walked by the Slytherin table, but Lily motioned for him to relax. Agreeing the greenhouses would be deserted enough until class started in half an hour, they wrapped themselves in their cloaks and trudged through the wet grass. Halfway there, Remus suddenly spoke up.

"Sirius traumatized me into telling him why I was seeing McGonagall and then they laughed at me for it."

"For letting yourself get bullied, _by them,_ into telling?" Lily said indignantly, hurrying to catch up with Remus’ slightly longer strides.

"No... for the reason I was seeing McGonagall."

"Oh. Then I suppose you’re not very keen on telling me either." Lily hoped she’d managed to keep the disappointment out of her voice. Her little raid the previous day had gotten her nothing but a guilty conscious and a lot more questions, some revolving around pink lace knickers and stuffed rodents. She still believed it was her right to know whether her fellow Prefect was in trouble or out to cause it, but she felt bad about not trusting him enough to wait.

_Damn Severus and his crazy theories..._ The opportunity had been so perfect, so tempting, and she had allowed her doubts to take over and make her give in. Lately, Lily didn’t know who to trust anymore; Remus, who kept so many secrets but was always kind, or Severus, who was _Severus_ \- and friends with the likes of Mulciber.

"No. But when I make promises, I do so because I intend to keep them." Remus ground out, and stopped dead in his tracks when he realised what he’d said. He really _was_ a pathetically good boy... Now he was beginning to see why Sirius always tried so hard to change that in him. Remus scowled. But of course _Sirius_ would be the cause of that feeling.

Lily had stopped next to him, and he could already feel the heat of her gaze starting to burn into him.

"Promise me you won’t laugh."

Lily raised an eyebrow. "I promise."

"Swear it."

"Okay, I swear."

"On your mother’s grave." Remus demanded, knowing that her mother was one of the most sacred things in Lily’s life.

"On my mother’s grave, I swear it. But no creepy Unbreakable Vow stuff, alright?"

"Naturally." His voice didn’t sound natural, though. After taking a deep breath, he opened his mouth, looked up at Lily, and froze. The redhead watched in concern as all the blood left his face. Not that there was much there to begin with, but it was a worrisome sight. Remus’ sickly appearance gave one the impression that he could keel over dead at any moment, which gained him the sympathy and teddy bear treatment of all females too old for him to date, and an ever-present concern from those his own age who weren’t somehow scared off by it.

"Remus, are you alright?" She stepped towards him, but he backed away, one hand raised aversively.

"I’m fine, don’t worry. It’s just..."

With his eyes firmly on the ground between his feet and trying with all his might to make himself believe that he was not talking to another person, he said: "Listen carefully, because I don’t think I’ll be able to tell you - or anyone - this again. I went to McGonagall yesterday to ask her to teach me to conjure flowers from thin air. I want to know how to do that so I can surprise Sheila Carter with a bouquet of amaryllis flowers on Halloween. I want to do _that_ because... I’m in love with her." He let out a breath that could have been his last and scrunched his eyes shut, waiting for something he couldn’t think of but made him cower nontheless.

There was a medium-sized silence before Lily spoke.

"That’s all?"

"Huh?" Remus’s eyes snapped open and shot right to Lily’s face. She looked at him with both her eyebrows raised.

"After all the fuss you made about it, I thought you had some dreadful secret. This is... rather anticlimactic."

Remus deflated. "Oh."

Seeing his crestfallen look, Lily quickly added: "I mean, of course it’s not something trivial and common, but it’s not... eh... something I’d expected you to make such a fuss about." she finished lamely.

"Make a fuss about it?"

"Oh, come on Remus, you were acting like you were being led to your execution."

"Oh." he said again.

Lily grimaced and mentally smacked herself. _Great move, Einsteinette. Depress him even further, why don’t you? Just because it’s not something as dreadful as what Severus keeps saying it is doesn’t mean it’s not a big deal to the poor bloke!_

"Okay, let’s try this again, shall we? Ahem. Oh Remus, that’s wonderful!" She hugged him, hoping he’d go along with the play. Luckily, after a moment of tense silence he sighed and patted her on the back.

"Thanks, Lily."

She withdrew and smiled at him. "I’m sorry. I really think it’s great. Sheila Carter, you said? She’s a fourth year Hufflepuf, isn’t she?"

Remus nodded, almost, almost blushing.

"You sneaky devil." Lily poked him in the ribs. "Is that what you wanted to keep quiet so badly? I must admit, there have been times I thought I’d never live to see the day. This is wonderful. So tell me, how long has this been going on?" She hooked his arm through hers and led him to the greenhouses.

"G - going on?"

"How long have you, you know, been in love? This plan obviously hasn’t occurred to you overnight."

"Oh... well, uhm, I - I don’t know, really..."

"Let me put it this way: when did you first notice her?"

"Uhm... I guess on Platform 9 ¾, at the beginning of second year."

"That long?!"

"Well, she’s hard to miss, isn’t she? I mean, you’d think she was a Malfoy, what with the colour of her hair and her complexion, and Malfoys attract attention. And her eyes... have you ever seen eyes like that? So... big and, and... is it blue? Or purple, or green? They’re so unique, it’s almost like they change colour depending on the light. And they match her complexion, did you ever -" Remus stopped as he noticed Lily’s not-quite-suppressed sniggers. She pressed a hand to her mouth when she saw him staring at her in a vain attempt to stop giggling. "What’s so funny?"

"N - nothing."

He looked at her pointedly.

"Oh, don’t be like that, Remus. It’s nothing, just... yesterday you’d rather die than admit this - that you’re in love - and now you start babbling about how pretty you think her eyes are."

Remus made a sour face. "I thought that was the entire point about being in love? That, and doing stupid things to impress the object of your affection."

"What? Oh no, that’s not it at all... Well, maybe it is a little bit, but not _entirely_."

"Really? Oh... that explains a lot. I’ll tell James that. Maybe he’ll be a bit less annoying if he knows how you think about the matter."

"You will not!" Lily exclaimed, horrified.

"Why wouldn’t I?" Remus shot her a sly glance and pulled her along on the last few yards to the greenhouse they’d be having Herbology class in in a quarter of an hour. "I thought you hated the way he treats you."

Lily stammered, but no actual words came out. He was right, her reaction didn’t make any sense. But for some reason, they felt like they made sense, which confused her. And not in a good way. She scowled. "You are not speaking to Potter at all, Mr Lupin. Or had you forgotten what it means to give someone a black eye?"

They stared at each other with narrowed eyes for a moment until they simultaneously burst out laughing. "Alright, that’s a draw." they said in unison. They sniggered and settled their backs against the doors of the greenhouse, keeping their thoughts to themselves.

"So, seriously. When did this start?"

Remus sighed and ran a hand through his light brown hair, his gaze on his feet. "Must have been about a year ago... It was around this time of year, I remember I was in the library doing research for one of Kettleburn’s essays. She came up to me and asked me if I could help her with a problem she had with her Transfigurations homework. I wondered why she hadn’t asked Sirius or James, who were notorious for their prowess in Transfigurations - much more so than I am. Turned out she was afraid to ask Sirius or James, because they were... well, because they were Sirius and James. So she turned to me, because I was less intimidating, and it felt like it just... clicked. At least, to me. We’ve talked once in a while since then, but nothing more." He shrugged, looking sheepish.

Lily was performing complicated Arithmancy calculations in her head, digging up everything she’d ever heard about, and seen of, Sheila Carter. Apart from her unusually pale complexion, which had given the poor girl some problems with the more obnoxious Slytherins because they _did_ resemble Malfoyish traits quite a bit while her family was far from pure-blooded, it was hardly a remarkable girl. Next to no detentions, quiet and with an air of content calmth, rather shy.

It didn’t surprise Lily that this would be the girl to finally draw Remus from his shell. They matched. Well, apart from the content and detention-less parts; Remus was an angsty teen whose mischievous streak was sometimes grossly underestimated. But upon further comparison, it also didn’t surprise Lily that Remus was reluctant to risk the vapid bond they seemed to have by trying to become closer to her. Carter’s content aura was quite consistent; Lily had, as a prefect, kept an eye on the girl during a period of disturbing encounters with her (and everyone else’s) Slytherin bullies, and the thing that had surprised Lily most was how little effect their taunts and threats seemed to have on her good mood. She seemed unable to get truly depressed. It was quite possible that Sheila Carter seemed so content with her current relationship with Remus that it robbed him of his hopes that she might be interested in something more. Oh dear.

"Have you ever dropped hints for her?" Lily asked. "Like offering to help her with her homework more often, or carrying her books, or buying her a little something when you meet in Hogsmeade - why are you looking at me like that? Don’t tell me you’re _not_ the type of guy to do something as sweet as that."

The part of Remus’s face that wasn’t occupied by his wide eyes was very pale. "I - of course it crossed my mind, but... that would have been so _obvious_!" This confirmed Lily’s suspicions; Sheila was oblivious, and Remus was scared that an attempt to become more intimate would ruin things. Something stirred in the redhead. Something matchmakerish.

She raised an eyebrow and said jokingly: "And conjuring flowers for her on Halloween is not ‘obvious’ behaviour? Your reasoning astounds me, Mr Lupin."

"Yes, well, I - I decided to stop being a wuss and give it a try. If it doesn’t work out, then at least it’ll be over with once and for all." Remus said, trying to sound like his insides did not twist into a triple knot at the very thought.

A wide grin appeared on Lily’s face. "That’s such a good idea that I don’t even care it _must_ have been inspired by Sirius Black. I’ll help you."

"Huh? Ick!"

She hugged him, instantly making him look around for any sign of James. The fact that James had dropped Herbology and was as such not likely to see this decapitation-inducing move did little to dispel Remus’s fear, for he knew that Sirius and James carried the Marauder’s Map on either of their bodies at all times.

"Lily, what are you doing?!" he squeaked.

"Let’s start with that - your reaction to physical intimacy. Such a squeamish attitude won’t do if you’re going to snare yourself a girlfriend." Remus blanched at the thought of what ‘treatment’ of this supposed flaw would entail, and wished his mother had not thought him that it was wrong to use any kind of force against a girl, even if it was to save your neck by getting her off of you. "No wait, let’s _not_ start with that." Remus could have died of relief. "That absurd shyness of yours is far more urgent. You’re shaking like a leaf and have been looking ready to faint ever since we left the castle. How did you ever think to approach Sheila if this is how you react to a simple talk with _me_?"

The arrival of Professor Sprout and several of their fellow students saved Remus from having to answer properly. "It’s not that simple, Lily. Look, I’d rather not have this become common knowledge, so could you please not mention any of this in public?"

She disentangled herself from him, noticed their audience, and took the hint. She looked at Remus with an adamant glint in her eyes as they moved to the side to allow Sprout to open the doors to the greenhouse, and whispered: "Fair enough. But don’t think you can avoid me, Remus - during my next free period I’m seeing McGonagall to reserve an empty classroom for us to use as a private testing area."

As they filed into the greenhouse, Remus suppressed the urge to groan. First he was crazy enough to ask McGonagall for help, and now Lily, too, had joined the ranks of the tortmentors-through-helpful-gestures-he-could-not-refuse-without-being-unforgivably-rude. He wished he’d never learned what ‘female’ meant.

But then he remembered the way the light shone off of Sheila’s wavy hair on a lazy summer’s day, and imagined what it would feel like to run his fingers through it while she looked at him lovingly, and he felt like kissing both Lily and McGonagall for being so sweet and attentive.  
  
  
  
There was a suspicious murmur floating about at the start of the next period. Whenever James tried to listen in, the murmurers would suspiciously fall silent, look at him oddly, and start giggling. The most he was able to determine was that the subject of murmuring was not one of their recent stunts, not even an older one that had resurfaced. It was highly suspicious.

"I wish you hadn’t let Wormtail get beaten up like that." he told Sirius from the corner of his mouth. "He’d have found out what those herbology girls are whispering about without any trouble."

Sirius merely raised an eyebrow. At the end of the period he lagged behind and told James not to wait for him. Seeing the way he waggled his eyebrows at a black-haired Ravenclaw girl whose name currently escaped his grasp, James complied, shaking his head in amusement. When the Ravenclaw stumbled into the Great Hall fifteen minutes later, still looking flushed and ineffectively trying to cool herself off with her waving hand, James was all but surprised and went back to sending covert glances at Lily Evans, who was giddily talking to Remus a little ways down the Gryffindor table.

The fact that Sirius himself did not return started bugging him another couple of minutes later, though. He reluctantly ceased the movement of his head between the direction of Lily Evans and that of the doors (he’d looked like he was following a tennis match) and went looking for his friend.

His mind was already forming plans of retaliation should Sirius’s absence be caused by Slytherins, and plotting out escape routes should a teacher have somehow snatched his friend up for immediate detention. One of the two _had_ to be the case; this was Sirius One-Track-Mind Black he was talking about. Therefore, what James found was not what he had expected.

Sirius was sitting on a table in the now abandoned Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. His hair stood slightly on end and there were traces of lipstick around his mouth and ear, but he looked otherwise unscathed. Troubled and pensive, yes, and maybe a bit pale, but unharmed. Nothing like he would be if he had been attacked or taunted. Unless it was something really serious... James’s insides froze as he thought of all the things this could mean, considering the current state of affairs in the wizarding world. He knew Sirius’s younger brother Regulus had taken to hanging around a group of shady Slytherins who openly bragged about becoming Death Eaters once they were out of Hogwarts; what if something had happened to him?

"Sirius?"

Sirius started. It seemed he had been quite engrossed in his thoughts.

"Are you alright?"

"What? Of course I am, why wouldn’t I be?"

James gave him a Look, copied straight from his mother’s face. Sirius shook his head - like a dog shaking water from its coat - and stood up.

"It’s nothing, Prongs."

"Oh, don’t give me that crap, Sirius. First Moony, now you..."

Sirius’s mouth twitched. "Girls really are a pain, aren’t they? Alright then... she said I’m a lousy kisser."

James’ eyes narrowed. "That’s all?"

"Yes."

"I don’t buy it."

"Why, thank you." Sirius said sarcastically, before turning more serious. "Prongs, if word of this leaks out to the rest of the Hogwarts witches, my reputation -"

"She didn’t look like she’d had a lousy snog when she came down." James interrupted.

Sirius stared at him with a blank look. "I... made the kissing part up to her." he drawled meaningfully. James studied his face carefully. His friend didn’t look entirely honest. But then again, Sirius was such a good and frequent liar, how should James know if he was, say, trying overly hard to look like he wasn’t lying, because he realised how skilled he was at deceptions and that James would remember that, and really was telling the truth so he wanted to make sure James would believe him. Er - wait, hold on, come again?

"Are you sure nothing more is going on?" James asked uncertainly.

Sirius looked him square in the eye. "Yes. She took me by surprise, that’s all. That mess with Remus last night, and again this morning... it, you know, it unsettled me more than I’d realised."

Well, at least that much was true. In a way.  
  
  
  
Sirius kept a close eye on Remus for the remainder of the day. Though the werewolf persisted in ignoring his presence, he must have felt Sirius’s eyes burning into his back. They had one class together, after which Remus left for the library to do his homework. Not putting it past Remus’s foul mood to deduct points from Gryffindor for alleged scheming of pranks if he followed him there (which, admittedly, was one of Sirius’s main reasons for visiting the library), he instead used the Marauder’s Map. This tactic worked when Remus went on his Prefect patrol shift too. Sirius kept an especially close eye on everyone to come near Remus for longer periods of time.

When his friend (though to his own dismay, Sirius felt an uncomfortable twinge in his heart at the word he normally used for his fellow Marauder so casually) returned to Gryffindor Tower late that night, he cleared the map and went down to the common room under the pretence of wanting to look for a quill he seemed to have lost. As expected, Remus ignored him and headed straight for the staircase to the boys’ dormitories. Sirius jumped up from his spot by the fire and blocked his path.

"We need to talk, Remus."

"Oh?" He seemed unimpressed. "Would that be about your apologies, by any chance?"

"No, I -"

"Then I’m not listening." With that, Remus brushed past Sirius. The latter quickly blocked the entrance to the staircase, though. Remus glared at him and tried to shove him out of the way, but Sirius shoved him back.

"What the Hell do you want, Sirius?"

"I made a good deal today." Sirius said casually. "You know Dorcas Meadows from Ravenclaw, don’t you? Well, a while back, she told me she had a bet going with a friend of hers, about who would be able to kiss the more popular bloke. I refused at the time, but today I found out that bet is still running. Which came in very handy for me, because I was able to ask something from her in return. She told me some interesting things." Sirius carefully studied Remus’s expression for any reaction, but it seemed the latter was developing quite a poker face. "About something that happened during Herbology this morning."

"Just like you to treat a girl like that." Remus said coolly. But had his eyes widened just then?

"You know, I’m beginning to think that maybe James isn’t as paranoid about Evans and others competing for her affection as I thought he was." Sirius persisted.

"Let me through, Sirius." Remus hissed.

"I came _this_ close to telling James about it immediately after I’d heard it."

"That’s nice, but I don’t know what you’re talking about, so let me through!"

"I see." Sirius’s expression darkened. "Very well, I’ll be direct then. Are you trying to seduce Evans?"


	4. This Is Called A Collision

Remus had to remind himself to keep breathing.

_Am I sure I just heard Sirius ask me if I was trying to seduce Lily?_

He checked.

_Yep, sure did._

If he hadn’t been so angry, he would have laughed. Hard. It was the epitome of irony; when he found a solution to one problem, that solution would create another problem. Lily wanted to help him, and because of that, Sirius was now standing here with the crazy idea that it was _her_ Remus was trying to woo. Brilliant. Just bloody brilliant. Why, _why_ couldn’t he, just for once, do something without half the wizarding world falling over him?

Something rose up in his chest, something big and wild that wanted nothing more than to burst out and lunge at Sirius, who was still looking at him with that ridiculous, preposterously grave expression.

"What if I was?"

Oh, that must be it. Funny, Remus thought it would have been a shout of sorts. A spontaneous smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as Sirius paled. At that moment, he understood exactly why Sirius enjoyed to shock people so much. It felt good to act his anger out like this.

"What is it, Sirius, did I say something wrong? I don’t see why I wouldn’t wish to make Lily my girlfriend." he said, taking sadistic delight in the contortions of Sirius’s face.

"She - you know James fancies her." Sirius said incredulously. "He has for ages, even if he only realised it recently."

"So? It’s not like she fancies him back." Remus snapped his fingers, like something had just occurred to him. "As a matter of fact, she can’t stand him! Unlike me. We get along quite well, actually. My, it seems I’d have a far better chance to ‘seduce’ her than James does."

If he’d told Sirius he liked the taste of dragon dung, he probably wouldn’t have looked more shocked - and certainly not as enraged. "What’s wrong with you, Remus? He’s your friend! Going after his girl is - is -"

"Hurtful? Callous? Something only a completely insensitive prick would do?" Remus supplemented. He sneered, his own bottled up pain and anger drifting closer and closer to the surface. "Good grief, that would be horrible, wouldn’t it? Now where have I seen such actions before?"

"W - what are you saying?"

"You need to _ask_?!" Remus spat, disgusted and, though he refused to show it, hurt.

"James and I have been nothing but the best of friends for you, Moony." Sirius flared up indignantly. "We stuck by you when you turned out to be a werewolf, we even became animagi for your sake -"

"Really? To be honest, I’ve always wondered about that. Oh, I know you consider yourselves noble and good for doing that, but isn’t it possible that you did those things just because you thought it was cool? Think about it; how many people can say they have a real live werewolf for a friend? How many people become Animagi at age fifteen? You guys are urban legend material. Isn’t that what you call ‘one of the main ambitions of every Marauder’?"

Sirius looked horrified, but Remus wasn’t finished yet. His voice was getting increasingly louder.

"And besides, do you think that’s all it takes to be a good friend? All that really comes down to is _pity_. You treat me like an underling, just like Wormtail. All you and James care about is yourself and each other!" he shouted. He was surprised he wasn’t crying yet. "Everybody else is just there to amuse you. To be _used_. Are you proud of yourself for what you did to Peter? Well, are you?!" His voice had gained a hysterical edge by now, but he didn’t care. If he didn’t get this out now, he felt like he would choke on it. "What kind of friend would do something like that? No, don’t answer that, I already know; the same kind of friend who believes stupid rumours from girls he’s snogged for a filthy deal, and doesn’t know his so called _friends_ well enough to trust them."

He made another move for the stairs, and this time, Sirius let himself be shoved out of the way. Once in the dormitory, he headed straight for his bed and, ignoring James altogether, pulled the curtains closed and cast the most powerful _colloportus_ and _silencio_ charms he could muster on them. Fisting his hands in his hair, he let out an unintelligable cry, long and painful and sounding unhinged even to himself. But it was a release to transfer the chaos in his head to the air, even if the sound was confined within magical boundaries. So Remus howled.

_Cry like a wolf._

Remus buried his face in his pillow, shaking and breathing heavily, when he could finally identify his own emotions again. He tried to get them under control and keep them all in, but the urge to cry was too strong, and soon tears came and soaked his pillow.

_What have I done? What have I done?_ he kept thinking. The anger had left him, dissolved in the heat of reality for what it was; an insubstantial subsitute for the real emotions he had suppressed; and now he just felt the sting of Sirius’s words and the ever-present guilt over his own existence, made worse by the fact that he now had something that really was entirely his fault. _I didn’t mean it like that... not really. Why did it have to come to this? Why can’t they just be happy for me? Why does everything have to be so complicated - being a teenager is complicated enough without being a werewolf to boot! Why does that stupid moon always have to ruin everything?_

The cold, unfeeling voice of reason that lurked in the back of his mind told him not to blame everything that went wrong in his life on his lycanthropy, but it didn’t manage to convince him this time. He always tried to dismiss the effects of his condition as much as he could, but in the end, it still caught up to him. Pretending like nothing was wrong, that he was every bit as confident as his friends and that he wasn’t over-sensitive didn’t work. He was scarred inside and out, and he knew it. As much as he tried, he would never be normal, he would never have normal friendships or know normal love.

He curled up into a small, shaking ball, now attempting to hide the sounds of his anguish despite the fact that nobody could hear them either way. _I can live with that! My life doesn’t have to be perfect. But - I just want to be happy, some way... any way. Make the best of things with my friends and the girl I love. Is that really too much to ask for?_  
  
  
  
Fearing his knees might give out from underneath him, Sirius sat down on the bottom steps of the staircase. He realised he was shaking. That... had not gone as expected. Staring blindly into the dying fire on the other side of the room, he carefully kept the words Remus had hurled at him at an arm’s length, lest they would overwhelm him. His thoughts were going every possible direction without getting anywhere, like a frantic dog on a leash.

_Remus is wrong. Was he really that angry? How could I not have noticed? I thought he was just cranky. He’s wrong. How did he get that idea, it wasn’t like that! He was wrong._

He wasn’t wrong.

Despite his best efforts, Remus’s harsh words snuck up on Sirius and pounced him from behind, shook him up and left him in insecure bits and pieces.

_Lousy friend, you don’t care about us, you don’t trust us, you only care about yourself, you insensitive prick._

He was wrong!

_It’s not like that at all!_

...was it?

Sirius Black did not like having to do in-depth soul searching. Whenever he was forced to do so, it was usually the result of something nasty, and what he found would be equally ugly.

No, he didn’t like this one bit.

When James came down to look for him, Sirius checked the clock and thanked the small amount of luck that had made it a Saturday by then.  
  
  
  
Breakfast the next morning was a bleary-eyed affair; James had been kept awake all night by worries over Sirius and his uncharacteristic silence. He had tried to pry something, anything from his friend, but much like during lunch, the dog animagus avoided the questions directed at him.

Sirius himself had hardly gotten a wink of sleep in between worrying over Remus, or Lily and James, or Remus’ words and the remaining question of whether or not Remus was trying to make a move on Lily. Come morning, when fatigue finally claimed him, Sirius decided to sleep in and skip breakfast in favour of an extra large, early lunch.

Remus had yet to open his curtains, and Peter was still in the hospital wing.

Thus it came to be that James went down to the Great Hall all on his own for the first time in a long while. The murmuring had started again, James observed, his suspicions raising to new heights. It was obvious from the covert looks, not-so-covert pointing fingers and the suppressed giggles that were sent in his direction that it had something to do with either James himself, the Gryffindor Quidditch team, or the Marauders.

James was going down their list of recent pranks, scuffles, Quidditch practices and public appearances in general again in his head, all the while chewing on a piece of sausage that had long since been reduced to mush. And then it hit him. Sirius and the Ravenclaw girl. Sirius had been acting strange ever since they’d snuck off together. She had said something that had upset Sirius, he was sure of it. Now that he thought about it, the possibility that it had something to do with the recent suspicious murmurs was rather big.

Sirius kept to a tight schedule when it came to girls, consisting roughly of: ignore them around Hogsmeade weekends _(reserved for the Marauders)_ , around regular weekends _(reserved for the Marauders)_ , Quidditch matches _(reserved for emotional support of Prongs and celebrations)_ , holidays _(reserved for trying to sneak off to Prongs’s house, or, more recently, Moony’s if full moon happened to occur during the holidays)_ , festivities _(reserved for having fun with the Marauders)_ , and full moons _(reserved for Moony)_ – let them come if there are no schemes scheduled – and feel free to reap the benefits of your natural charm when the house-elves take away the porn _(nb, never try the latter without good reason, girls are such a bother in everyday life)_.

The Ravenclaw, what was her name again, Meadows?, fell outside the norm; they were working on paint-filled dungbombs, so tradition had it that Sirius should be too busy to notice her.

The question was, what had she told him that would trouble Sirius To-Hell-With-It-All Black so much? Only one way to find out...

James kept an eye on her throughout the meal, which he ate slowly (to his standards), and eventually poured himself another goblet of pumpkin juice, which he sipped sparsely as he continued to wait for her to move. The only time he let his gaze off of her was to admire Lily’s rear when she passed by in front of him, and even then the slap he received when he whistled made him look back to the Ravenclaw table almost immediately. When she finally left the Great Hall with one of her frizzy-haired friends, James followed her and called her name.

He put on his most flirtatious smile as he approached and said: "Hey Meadows, could I talk to you for a minute? In... private?"

Meadows exchanged glances with her friend, who grinned and said: "Two in as many days? Did you brew an aphrodisiac or something?"

Meadows looked mock-offended and shoved the other girl away. "You just go on ahead, Lady Scepsis. I’ll... see to what Potter wants, then I’ll come right after you." She smiled at him suggestively, and James made shooing motions to the other girl for emphasis. The frizzy-haired girl chuckled and walked away, leaving them with a final "You owe me, Dorry, and you’d better make it good.".

"Let’s go somewhere more private." James suggested.

"My, you don’t beat around the bush, do you?"

James said nothing as he led her to a deserted corridor. Once they were sure no-one was around, Meadows leaned against the wall and looked James up and down.

"Before you try anything, a few rules -"

"That won’t be necessary." James interrupted her. "I only want to know something."

Meadows raised an eyebrow, her inviting demeanour melting away. "Oh." she said coldly as she straightened and crossed her arms in front of her chest. "And what would that be?"

"What did you tell Sirius Black yesterday during lunch?"

Both her eyebrows shot up at this, and she let out a laugh. "My my," She looked at him with renewed interest. "You want to know _that_ , huh? Oh my... That I’ll tell you in exchange for one date. Three hours in Hogsmeade, within the next month."

"No chance." was James’ immediate retort.

"Oh, come on, I know you can afford it."

"It’s not a matter of money, it’s a matter of commitance."

"But I wasn’t talking about money!" she said gleefully, clapping her hands together in mirth.

James glared. Though he knew perfectly well that Evans’s reactions to his advances could hardly be called positive, he still kept on asking her to go out with him. It was a laughable thing, he realised that too, but he didn’t care; he wanted Lily Evans, and he wasn’t going to give up until he had gotten her. Having someone else rub it in that that wasn’t going to happen any time soon was a different matter, though.

"Look," he said, drawing his wand. "Consider this information as being in the public domain. Do you know what that means? It means that you’ll have to share it fairly."

He could see that the implication that he would use force set her on edge, though she tried to hide it behind disdain. "Oh, grow up, would you. I’ll tell you, but don’t take your bad temper out on me once you’ve heard it."

James nodded apprehensively. Meadows seemed to have a hard time to keep from grinning. She leaned in and whispered: "Remus Lupin snogged your ‘girlfriend’, Lily Evans. It was yesterday morning, in front of greenhouse three. I saw them with my own two eyes. They were _all over each other..._ "  
  
  
  
Remus took his time. He listened carefully and waited for Sirius’s telltale snores before he got out of bed and went to the bathroom to make a half-hearted attempt at drowning himself in the water basin. He freshened up, changed into clean robes and went out to eat, hoping nobody would talk to him if only he kept his face blank enough. At least his red eyes could be blamed on lack of sleep.

He was right in time to witness something so extraordinary that it came close to lifting his mood; James getting what he had coming for him.

When he descended the marble staircase to the Entrance Hall, a shriek cut through the air. From a side passage two figures emerged, one obviously James Potter, the other a girl sporting a head of almost fluorescent lime green hair. James backed away, a string of obscenities flowing from his mouth, and the girl advanced on him with her wand raised.

"Ungrateful bastard!" she yelled, and a blast of electric blue light hit James square in the face. With a hoarse cry, he put his hands over his eyes, and the girl stormed off. The corners of Remus’s mouth tugged up into a small grin. That spell would sent jolts of static electricity through his body for the remainder of the morning and, if the girl’s jinx had been powerful enough, maybe even well into the afternoon. Having caught it in the face, the effect would be strongest there. Remus let out a sigh of disappointment when after a moment’s struggle, James put his wand to his forehead, stuttered a _finite incantatem_ and the dancing sparks disappeared.

Remus resumed his descent, intend on silencing his growling stomach so Madame Pince wouldn’t kick him out of the library, where he planned to spend the remainder of the day. He only got halfway, though, before James shook his head and looked up, straight at Remus.

"You!" he yelled, extending an accusing finger to him. He started walking toward Remus without lowering his arm. "You traitor!" A group of third years coming out of the Great Hall quickly hid behind the double doors. Remus froze.

James broke into a run once he reached the stairs, and before it could register in Remus’s foggy mind, the black-haired boy grabbed him by the scruff and shook him wildly.

"You dirty traitor, how could you do that to me!"

"What are you talking about?" Remus stammered. Though he thought he knew, he wasn’t able to utter anything else.

"Evans! You bloody snogged Evans! She’s mine, Remus, you know how I feel about her! How could you do that? Ungrateful bastard!" he echoed the girl that had jinxed him moments before. Remus grabbed James’s wrists to steady himself; the rough treatment on top of the fuzziness of his mind, due to his recent lack of sleep, almost knocked him off his feet. It was hard to tell while trying to keep his head from bobbing back and forth, but he thought James looked like he was ready to burst into tears. "I thought we were friends! Friends don’t do that to each other, you ruddy traitor!"

"What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything!"

"Like Hell you didn’t, there were witnesses!"

"Witnesses of _what_?" Fear gripped Remus’s insides, more tightly even than James gripped his collar. Had that blasted rumour spread this far? So _quickly_?

"You and Evans s- sn- outside, by the greenhouses." James spat, unable to utter the offensive word. "You two were seen - seen - damnit, you bloody well know what you were seen doing! You stole her from me! Is that why you were so secretive the other day, huh? Because you knew you were a filthy turncoat?!"

"I didn’t do anything! You’ve got it all wrong -"

"Oh yeah? The way I see it there’s not mistaking it. Trying to impress a girl with self-conjured flowers, huh? Going to McGonagall to learn how to do that? And then Sirius ruined that, so you opted for the next best thing instead - flowers from the greenhouse!"

Remus stared at him, wide-eyed and out of breath. "Bloody Hell, Sirius was right. You really are paranoid. Nothing happened, you twit! How many times do I have to keep saying that?"

"You only have to confess!"

"HEY! STOP IT! POTTER, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?!"

The heads of both boys snapped to the top of the stairs. It was Lily, and she was livid. She stomped down the stairs to where they stood, raised her hand, and slapped James’s cheek.

"How dare you, Potter?" she hissed. "That’s twenty points from Gryffindor. Let go of Remus at once. Let go or I’ll make it fifty!"

James let Remus’s robes slip from his fingers as the latter stumbled backwards. He looked between the two Prefects, his expression a mixture of hurt, confusion, anger, and embarrassed apprehension.

"I am not yours or anybody else’s, Potter." Lily stormed. "What I do, with or without Remus, is none of your damn business. Do you understand? Leave me alone, and do not ever think you can tell me or any of my friends what to do. If I find out you’ve harassed Remus again, I will take the issue up with McGonagall and I swear I’ll do my utmost best to get you expelled!"

With that, she grabbed Remus by the arm and dragged him off, leaving James amidst a suddenly buzzing crowd, with a storm of emotions whirling through his mind.


	5. I Did Warn You Guys – That Hurts

Sirius _knew_ he looked a mess. But he wasn’t sure he looked bad enough to illicit _all_ the concerned looks from the Hogwarts witches and the taunting remarks from the Slytherins he was currently receiving. He pulled the Two-Way Mirror out of his bag to study his face, was puzzled for about three seconds, and then winced.

How could he have forgotten? He had a reputation to be a lady killer, so when he looked even remotely un-cool-and-hot-at-once without clues as to the cause that did not point to blatantly bad-ass behaviour, it was noticed. Damn all females. He could repress thoughts of his current problems, but conveniently forgetting about half of mankind was beyond even his abilities.

He decided not to pay anyone any heed. He just wanted a few bites to eat and a whiff of fresh air. Maybe that would clear his mind. Then he could think of a plan to create an effective brain bleach. _Amnesia_ spells didn’t seem quite up to the task.

As soon as he sat down at the Gryffindor table, however, he was dragged from his seat. Five other Gryffindors went crashing to the ground as the bench he had been sitting on toppled over.

"Hey!"

"We need to talk."

"Since when does talking involve one party dragging the other along without giving the latter a chance to stan-"

"Shut up."

"But I thought you wanted to talk?"

_"Shut up."_

"James, my robe is not a mop."

"What part of ‘shut up’ don’t you understand?"

"The part where I’m being dragged through the Entrance Hall on my arse! Oumph."

After one last shove, Sirius skidded across the marble floor until he came to rest with his back neatly against a wall. He blinked up at James, who towered over him. He counted, then blinked again.

"Where’d you get that bruise? The one in the middle of your forehead, I mean. It wasn’t there before."

"Where’d your black eye go? I thought we’d keep them so Remus would be reminded of how much of a git he’s being every time he sees us."

Sirius looked away.

James’s face contorted with rage. "I should have known! You’re siding with him!"

"What are you talking about?" Sirius asked, utterly befuddled. He could still see the expression on Remus’s pale face as he ripped what he had held for their untouchable friendship apart, the look in his eyes that revealed such raw, wounded distrust.

"I talked to Dorcas Meadows from Ravenclaw. She’s the girl you snogged for information yesterday, in case you’d forgotten or failed to ask."

Ouch. Merlin, what was going on? Was it Poke-Holes-In-Sirius-Black’s-Self-Confidence-Day,-Oh,-And-Have-Fun-Pouring-Salt-Into-The-Wounds?

"She told me what she told you. You bloody well knew what Moony - the little prick - was trying to do, and you didn’t tell me!"

"Trying to - oh, you mean trying to make a move on Lily?"

He’d never seen James look as angry as he looked then. "Yeah, that’s what I mean!"

Despite himself, Sirius flinched. Actually feeling hints of trepidation, he watched as James abruptly turned away, crossing his arms over his chest. He balled his fists, uncrossed his arms again, and held them at his sides stiffly as he stomped to and fro though the corridor he had dragged Sirius into. He put his hands on his hips, looked at the still seated Sirius, and opened and closed his mouth several times, ultimately without saying anything. Finally, he returned to his initial position, arms crossed and looking away.

"You’re insufferable, Sirius. How can I stay properly mad at _you_ when you’re sitting there like a kicked puppy?" Sirius morphed, but quickly changed back when James looked at him sharply (and made a move as if to really kick him). "Damnit, Sirius... you’re siding with Moony!"

"Tell that to Moony." Sirius muttered, sobering more quickly than he would have thought possible twenty-four hours previously.

"Huh?"

"Moony and I... had a fight. Over the whole snogging-Evans business."

James finally looked at him, a not quite pleasantly surprised expression on his face. "You too?"

" _You_ too?"

"I said that."

"Yeah, but I’m the one who had a fight with him, so why shouldn’t I say it as well?"

"Hold on, wait - when did this happen? Between you and Moony, I mean?"

"Last night." Sirius said reluctantly.

"So that’s what..."

"Yeah. I didn’t want to assume the worst about what Meadows had told me, because, you know, it was _Remus_ she’d been talking about. But he didn’t see it that way..."

He told James what had transpired at the bottom of the Gryffindor stairs the previous night, glad to get it off his chest and relieved to know that, even though Remus may have suddenly decided he was a slave driver of the worst kind and some incarnation of Satan - and, he had to admit (albeit grudgingly), that Peter had every reason to agree with Remus on that matter - at least James was still with him. James was just as shocked as he had been, and decidedly more indignant.

He plopped himself down beside Sirius against the wall. "He has some nerve! Accusing you of being a bad friend - what for, by the way? I don’t it anymore - while _he_ is the one who’s after his supposed friend’s girlfriend."

Sirius would have liked to agree, if only it were that simple. "Well, you see..." he said tentatively, knowing that once James got going about Evans, there was nigh no stopping him anymore. "That’s just it: I’m not sure he really _is_ after Evans."

James scoffed. "You just told me he didn’t deny it."

"Yeah, but he didn’t confirm any of it either."

"That’s because you didn’t pressure him. You know he’s a wimp like that."

He proceeded to rant about how enormously unfair it was that Lily was choosing Remus’s side over his and that Remus was sucking up to Lily behind his back. Sirius managed to, through rigorous sifting and translating of James-Potterian to the King’s English, gather enough information to figure out what had happened earlier that morning, all the while marvelling at James’s completely irrational possessiveness when it came to Lily Evans. Amusing as it could be sometimes, with everything that was going on it was beginning to worry Sirius.

"Alright James, I get it." he finally interrupted firmly. "Remus is a sodding git and Evans should be duck-taped to you to keep her from running off with other blokes. But you have to admit it doesn’t add up. If he was trying to get to Evans he would have kept his business with McGonagall secret from her, wouldn’t he? And by the way, I don’t think he’s given up on McGonagall’s lessons just yet; Evans woke me up earlier this morning to ask where Remus was, because McGonagall was looking for him -"

James looked grim and muttered: "Well, she found him."

Sirius couldn’t help but admire the intricate timing of it all, but wisely decided to hide that fact from James.

"She always manages to find _him_." James groused on. "It’s just not fair. I drop hints the size of anvils, right onto her toes, and she refuses to even look at me. And Remus, what does he do? Nothing, and she’s all over him! Wait, I get it - she likes him because he’s so _girly_. You never get a clear read on him, and when you think you’ve finally got him figured out, he goes and does something positively _loony_ , like turning out to be a werewolf or falling in love, and you can start all over again. They’re all the same... turn on you the first chance they get..."

"Have you been listening to me, Prongs? Have you even been _thinking_? Get a grip! _Remus is not after Evans._ "

"You’re only defending him to prove him wrong."

Sirius would not admit to that. He refused. "Remus is not after Evans." he maintained stubbornly. "He wouldn’t have blown up at me if he was. You said it yourself - he’s a wimp like that. And suppose he really did snog Evans yesterday. How should he have managed that? He just started learning how to conjure flowers two days ago. There simply hasn’t been the time for his plan to unfold, let alone take effect."

"They were at the greenhouses. You know, those things with plants and flowers in them?"

"The greenhouses are locked at night. Remus couldn’t have gotten in."

James scowled and ran a hand through his already messy hair in frustration. "I wouldn’t be surprised if he told her what had happened at McGonagall’s office and she - she thought it was so _sweet_ of him that he didn’t need his plan anymore."

"Then why would McGonagall still have sent out for him?" Sirius was beginning to get annoyed.

"Because she did not yet know it wasn’t necessary anymore."

"James, stop it. Now." Sirius ground out. "Or I _will_ choose Moony’s side, even if he hates my guts right now."

James glared at him. Sirius glared back.

"I am convinced Remus is not after Evans, Prongs."

"But you can’t prove it."

"Nor can you prove that he _is_ after her."

James looked down, frustration and uncertainty evident on his face. Sirius couldn’t stand it, and for the first time felt himself get angry at Remus. Being angry at Remus always made him feel guilty, because... he was a dear friend, and... oh, bugger, because he pitied the young werewolf and felt like he should go easy on him!

_He was right... and if he was right about this, then what about those other things he said?_

Sirius pursed his lips. Okay, so there was a particle of truth in Remus’s words. But that same truth applied to Remus himself too, lately. In that case, Sirius was not about to feel guilty anymore. He shook his head like a dog would do to shake water from its coat, flinging the thoughts away.

James now, Remus later.

He knew just the thing to cheer his messy-haired friend up. Espionage.

Sirius turned to James with a shrewd grin. "How about we get some proof, then?"

Seeing the mischievous glint in Sirius’s eyes, James raised an eyebrow, encouraged by his friend’s confidence. "I assume you have a plan...?"

"Of course! We sic Wormtail on him. Simple as that. The perfect spy for all occasions - he even fits into your purse or robe pocket."

James snorted, and Sirius was pleased to see that the grin stayed on his face. "Then I guess it’s also safe to assume that Wormtail’s new blueberry-porridge look has proven to be reversible?"

"It sure is. He’s due to be released sometime around dinner. I checked." He didn’t care for Wormtail? Hah! "If he doesn’t show up we’ll have to stage a charge at the Hospital Wing, though. Pomphrey can’t keep _our_ rat there forever."

"A win-win arrangement if I ever saw one."

"Indeed. Now, if you don’t mind," Sirius scrambled to his feet. "I’m going to eat. Anyone who disturbs me now will be jinxed."

"A reasonable measure. Fancy a bit of one-on-one Quidditch afterwards?"

"Sure. It’s been a while, I’m getting out of shape.  
  
  
  
Unbeknownst to Peter, his early departure from the Hospital Wing that afternoon caused some slight changes in the plans that had been laid out by his friends just hours before. Sirius and James hadn’t counted on the fact that he would find Remus before they could find _him_.

Since even the proddable, dragable, pokable, and all-around compliant Peter could only stand so much of the overprotective Madame Pomphrey, once she had announced his newly restored health he transformed to his rat form when she scurried off to help a second-year with toenails protruding several feet from the noses of his shoes, and snuck off. One would never catch Peter saying being a Marauder hadn’t boosted his assertiveness and self-confidence. He didn’t think he would ever quite match his friends in bravery, nobility, coolness or kindness, but he was glad he had been able to acquire a place in their midst. Why Sirius and James put up with him and Remus cared for him was a mystery to Peter, but he wasn’t about to be ungrateful for the friendship they had given him, uncomfortable though it may be sometimes. He could have easily ended up on the receiving end of the Marauders’ force (it was a small miracle that he hadn’t), but instead, he had been allowed to become one of them. It was assuring to know that he had a place that was fit for him, that he played an integral part in the hierarchy, even if his place in said hierarchy was at the very bottom.

That’s why what he found when he came back was so unnerving.

He trudged up the stairs to his dormitory without a care in the world (well, none that he didn’t have on a daily basis, at least), opened the door (which, in hand-wringing retrospect, he couldn’t blame on his predicament for being closed, as the Marauders had a strict policy of keeping the door to their dormitory closed at all times lest one of their schemes would be noticed or tried to flee), stepped inside - and froze dead in his tracks.

Remus was there, sitting on his bed, with his back to the door and his head in his hands. His shoulders were shaking and his laboured breath hitched at random intervals.

For a moment Peter’s mind refused to accept it - Remus was crying! Remus, who cried when the moon came close to full, in the middle of the night when he thought nobody could hear him, and felt guilty whenever his friends noticed and tried to comfort him. And if it were James and Sirius who found out, not Peter, they would _always_ try to comfort him. But Remus was alone. Where were they? What had happened? Why weren’t they here?

"Remus?" Peter heard his own voice say, despite the fact that according to all logic, he should have stayed completely still lest Remus would notice him and he’d have to - he couldn’t -

Remus almost jumped through his canopy in frightened surprise and spun around to face Peter, stuttering his name. He quickly tried to wipe the tears off his cheeks, but must have realised it was useless, as he instead covered his face and turned away.

"Remus..." Peter took a hesitant step forward. "What’s wrong?"

"N - nothing’s wrong. I’ve just got something in my e - eye, that’s - s all."

"That’s not true." Peter said tentatively. Remus always said nothing was wrong, and Sirius and James somehow always knew that he was lying. It couldn’t be any different now, could it?

"A jinx! I got hit in the face with a Statitricity Jinx."*

Could that be it? Peter knew a lot about jinxes and hexes - he got hit by them all the time and really, he wasn’t _that_ dim, so how could he not? - and it was clear that Remus was either mistaken, or lying.

"That’s not true either." Peter said lamely. "Remus, did something happen?"

What on Earth was he doing? He should get Sirius or James - or both, even better - for help. He wasn’t suited for this kind of stuff.

"N - no." Remus said in an unnaturally high-pitched voice. Then he glanced at Peter and a strange shiver passed over his face. He closed his eyes tighly, and a sob excaped him. "Yes," he said in a tiny voice, sinking back onto the edge of his bed. "I did such an awful thing..."

"S - should I get Padfoot or Prongs?"

"No!" The sudden force of that exclamation shocked Peter. "Don’t - please... stay. Could you hear me out? I need to tell someone, this is killing me."

Peter cautiously approached the werewolf and sat down next to him on the bed. Remus convulsively clenched and unclenched his hands in his lap. He grimaced when he noticed Peter staring at them.

"It’s to keep them from shaking." He held them out and Peter could see the tremors clearly. Remus let out a thin laugh and wiped his eyes. "I’m pathetic, aren’t I? The big bad wolf, shaking like a leaf when he spots a glimpse his own fangs."

"What happened?" Peter asked out of morbid curiosity.

Remus squeezed his eyes shut again. "I - I think I made the greatest mistake of my life." he managed to whisper, obviously with great effort. But once he had gotten that out, something seemed to give way, and suddenly the words came pouring from him, hasty and breathless.

"I’ve been so stupid, they’ll probably never trust me again. I - I yelled at Sirius. I said, I accused him - what it came down to - that he was a selfish prick who only really - only cared about James and himself, and that he only puts up with you because you’re useful to stroke his ego and that - that he suggested you guys would become animagi was because he thought it was cool, and that having a monster like me for a friend would be cool."

Peter was shocked from ‘yelled at Sirius’, but only at ‘monster’ did he gasp. "Remus, don’t say that! If James or Sirius hears you call yourself a monster they’ll be so angry!"

"No, oh no, not anymore. They’ll agree. Wholeheartedly. Who says such things to the best friends? They’re ri- No." Remus hunched over, burying his head in his arms. Peter wasn’t able to tell if the sound he made was a sob or a small, hysterical laugh. "I’m not a monster, it’s a full two weeks to full moon. Don’t worry Pete, I won’t say that I am again. But would you look at me?" Remus unfurled a bit and looked down at his shaking hands. "I’m such a mess. Such a pathetic, heartless, brainless excuse for a human being." Instead of bringing him to his senses, Remus’s own words only seemed to upset him further.

Peter was shocked and afraid and shocked and, well, very much shocked. He knew Remus loathed himself for what he was - it was the only reason Peter was not so scared of him that he wanted to run away screaming whenever the werewolf came into the room, but could actually relate to him - but _this_ bad... This wasn’t right. Remus was kind. Remus was dignified. Remus was the consciousness of the group. How could this have happened?

Peter only realised he had asked that last question out loud when Remus stilled and looked at him. A slightly manic smile formed and broke on his face and he closed his eyes, breathing deeply. He stood up and began to pace the dormitory as he spoke.

"That’s right, you wouldn’t know. You were in the Hospital Wing when it happened." Remus took a shaky breath before beginning his relay of the past days’ events. He told Peter that while the rat-animagus was causing a ‘distraction’ - apparently, he greatly disapproved of that - Sirius set out to ‘save’ him from McGonagall, thereby botching up the entire scheme Remus had so painstakingly set up.

"It took me _so long_ to find the courage to go to McGonagall, Peter... I know how this must sound, but I was absolutely terrified. I almost couldn’t believe it when McGonagall agreed, and if it was anyone other than McGonagall, I think I would have bolted. And then Sirius came in and my nerves were all on end already, and I was so nervous - I - I needed to calm down, but I couldn’t, Sirius kept putting me on edge. And when Sirius laughed at me when I told him what I was doing - that _hurt_ , Peter. And then James as well - it felt like - oh this is so stupid, how could I have been so stupid? - it felt like my own friends didn’t think I was worth it, or capable of - of - falling in love. You guys are the only people who care about me - aside from my parents, but they don’t count! It felt like James and Sirius didn’t think I was worth to be anything other than their admirer, like they wanted me to stay the way - an accessory - I just wanted them to be happy for me, Peter! James and Sirius and you are the reason I managed to find the nerve to pursue my dream of - crap, this sounds corny - you guys, your friendship gave me the courage to think that I might, you know, get a girlfriend, one day. But they - they laughed at me, and I so felt betrayed, and I didn’t want to think about that and I became angry, so angry..."

He told Peter about Lily Evans and Sirius, his words only confirming the look on his face - a kind of manic desparation that said it would only get worse still. When Remus came to the point where he stormed upstairs, he stopped his pacing and sank down where he stood, wrapping his arms around his knees and looking at Peter, with eyes that slowly drained from all emotion. His voice became flat.

"... that was so... so incredibly _stupid_. There needs to be a better word for that, for what I was, stupid just doesn’t cut it. Lily, she’d been such a sweetheart, she did everything I had wished Sirius and James would do. And when Sirius said what he said... something just snapped. How _dared_ he, I thought. I just - I lost my head. And before I knew it, I had told him all those terrible things, the things that I knew would hurt him the most - I should have just kept my mouth shut, I should never have told him that, it wasn’t fair. My paranoia isn’t their fault. And yet - I told _Sirius_ of all people that he was a hypocritical friend. He must hate me now. James must know by now, as well. I don’t know if he knew when - I should never have... how are they ever going to trust me again when they know I feel such things? It was not true - not really. It’s not their fault, it’s mine. They’re never going to understand, they’re so confident, they don’t know what it is like to... Merlin, I should have just kept my stupid mouth shut. But I was so upset, so nervous..."

Peter was at a loss for words. He could only listen silently as Remus wrung the words from his throat, told him the things that he couldn’t tell anyone else - not anymore. His by now hoarse voice sounded pained as he said: "Lily had really been... God, I hate myself whenever this thought comes to me, but Lily has been a better friend the past few days than James and Sirius. I guess three really is a crowd. Sirius and James would never do anything to hurt each other, they would always side with each other, they are like brothers. It was stupid of me to think I could be such close friends with them too."

Remus did not seem to notice how he automatically assumed that Peter wasn’t even in the same league as the three other Marauders, and now it was Peter who felt like a drawing-pin was jabbed into his back - Remus was always so kind to him.

"Poor Regulus, I think I know how he must feel." Remus went on, and chuckled bitterly. "But at least Regulus had good reason to think he could count on his big brother. I was just an idiot who thought that the first best person not to be disgusted by my lycanthropy would automatically be a perfect friend. I _knew_ they weren’t - don’t get me wrong, they are the best friends I’ve ever had and I could never be anything other than grateful to them for everything they have done for me and are doing for me... they just do not understand. They don’t know what it’s like to be trapped in this - this contaminated body, to be this disgusting cross between a man and a monster."

A brittle laugh escaped the werewolf, and he rested his face on his knees, shaking from tip to toe. "Good grief, if only they knew what a mess I am inside. They wouldn’t be very eager to be my friends, then. And it would be worse if they were not there. I don’t think I would be able to control myself at all, if it wasn’t for the sake of keeping what little friends I have.

Lily was looking at me this afternoon... looking at me like I was a puzzle with some missing pieces. That look in her eyes - she didn’t ask me any questions, probably because we were with McGonagall and she didn’t want to disturb my conjuring lesson - but it’s killing me not to be able to tell her what’s going on. She’s worried about me, Peter. She really cares about me. I’d rather die than have her turn on me, but it feels so unfair to keep her in the dark about my condition. She shouldn’t have to deal with my problems, surely not while she doesn’t even know about half of them. She sees the nasty effects and Merlin only knows what it must make her think."

Peter finally found his voice, a little cracked and seemingly disconnected from his common sense by the numerous blows that had recently been dealt to the foundations of its owner’s life. "I’m sure everything will be alright. If you’d talk to them I’m sure they’d -"

"No." Remus said slowly. He didn’t look Peter in the eye. "I don’t want... I - it’s... I don’t want them to know all this. Look, Peter, the thing is..." He seemed to shrink. "Despite telling you all this, I’m still angry and hurt. The feelings just won’t go away. My _pride -_ " he spat the word out like it was a foul tasting Bertie Bott Bean. "- won’t let them. And... I’m ashamed. And afraid. You know me better than they do - you’ve always done, did you ever realise that? Do you ever have the feeling that you want to be something bigger, something better than yourself, because you want your friends to respect you as equals, instead of merely tolerating you because they think you are pitiful?"

Yes. Peter did.

"It’s like that, kind of. I don’t want them to know how... unworthy I am. That sounded wrong, I know, but it’s the only right word. It feels so good to treat them the way they treat me, without having to ask myself if they’re not actually looking down their noses on me with all the disgust I deserve, and make cruel jokes about me behind my back. Letting you know all this is okay because - please don’t take this the wrong way Peter, I like you, I really do, but you’re not... you know..."

"Not as strong as Sirius and James. You wouldn’t want to be like me." Peter finished for him.

Remus looked up, guilt written all over his face.

"It’s okay." Peter said quietly. "I don’t blame you... I feel the same way."

"Please don’t tell Sirius or James what I told you."

"I promise."

Remus smiled at him, and Peter forced himself to smile back. One more comfortable illusion had been stripped from his life that afternoon. It disheartened him to know that even the kindest people were so insecure and unstable at the core, like a cold downpour on what should have been a warm, sunny day. And while his heart went out to Remus, he couldn’t help but be afraid of the dark clouds that had been revealed.

If even Remus could not withstand the storm, then how could Peter ever dream of doing it?  



	6. We’ll Be Playing Blind Today

Peter wondered whether Remus might have some kind of sixth sense, because moments after the werewolf had left - Merlin knew where to - the voices of Sirius and James could be heard coming up the stairs.

"Are you sure it was _this_ evening?"

"Yes. I honestly don’t know why he wasn’t there."

"At any rate, that was a waste of good equipment."

"You really think so? The look on her face... ah, priceless. But I have to admit she got a bit scary at the end there."

"D’you figure we should have asked Pomphrey first? Or, dunno, checked the Map before we used the bombs?"

"Let’s keep that between ourselves, alright Prongs?"

"That’s probably the smart thing to do."

As the door opened, Peter suddenly realised he was still sitting on Remus’s bed. No wonder Sirius and James were so surprised: it’s not every day you find a pudgy boy you’ve dubbed ‘missing from action’ sitting on the bed of a renegade werewolf, looking like he’s been _petrificus totalus_ sed in that position.

"Pete!"

"Wormtail, where were you mate?"

"N - nowhere." Peter squeaked.

"What’re you doing on Moony’s bed?"

Peter jumped up as if burned.

"Did the doxies get back into yours? Blimey, I thought we’d gotten rid of those. We need to start paying better attention to our projects once they’re finished, Padfoot. Remember last term, with those -"

But Sirius was not any paying attention to James. He looked from Peter to the stairs and back and said uneasily: "Say, Peter, you didn’t happen to run into Remus, did you? He just about disapparated when we saw him downstairs."

Peter squeaked and wrung his hands.

_"Thanks, Peter. So, just pretend I was never here, or that I walked away as soon as you saw me, or that I yelled at you too, for all I care. I’d rather have them angry with me for thinking me a complete and utter arse than have them make up to me out of pity."_

"H - he wasn’t in the mood to talk, it seemed." Peter managed to stutter, surprising himself with the excellence of that answer. Did Sirius buy it? He did!

"Figures." he mumbled, looking away and brushing a lock of black hair from his eyes that moments before hadn’t bothered him in the least. "Too bad."

But James said, his voice hard: "Good."

The two black-haired Marauders looked at each other sharply.

"Not again, please." Sirius finally said. "We wanted Wormtail, we found him, now let’s make use of it already."

James turned away, grumbling.

"The sooner we get this thing going, the sooner we’ll have proof that your precious Evans is completely safe and single, Prongs."

With an aggravated sigh, James threw his hands in the air in defeat. "Fine, fine. You tell Wormtail about the plan. I’m taking a shower. I think some pieces of dung got into the back of my shirt."

Sirius looked after him as he gathered his things and went into the bathroom. He shook his head. "I hate having to be the one to call him to reason. It’s supposed to be the other way around." he said with a sigh. "I honestly don’t know what he sees in her. Sure, she’s got good looks, but the girl’s a hellion! But it doesn’t matter." He turned to Peter as they heard the water start to run. "Where the blazes were you, Wormtail?" he demanded to know. "We nearly blew up the Hospital Wing trying to get you out, and you turned out not to be there at all!"

"I was here." Peter said sheepishly.

"Some sense of timing you have. The one time we expect you to stay put you up and leave and disappear without a trace! But at least we found you, little rat, and I guess we should be grateful for _that_." He snorted at his own joke, but he didn’t seem particularly amused. "Listen up Pete, here’s the deal. Oh, and you might want to sit down."

Sirius told Peter what had happened during his absence. He noticed that Sirius only told him the most basic facts and stayed carefully neutral, whereas Remus, who had talked and talked like he had been under a Babbling Jinx, had gone into painstaking detail and placed the blame everywhere he saw it as due, though mainly on himself.

And then Sirius told him about the latest Big Plan, and Peter was glad he had followed his advice about sitting down.

"I need to spy on Remus?" he repeated faintly.

Sirius nodded.

"In my rat form?"

Sirius nodded again, a bright smile spreading on his face.

"To find out who Remus really likes?"

"Exactly! Glad we understand each other so well."

"B - but -"

Sirius cocked an eyebrow. "What? You can do it, can’t you?"

"Well... I suppose, but..." He saw Sirius frown and swallowed thickly. "I just don’t think Remus fancies Lily Evans at all."

Sirius’s eyes narrowed. "Why?"

_He was quite clear about it to me._ But Peter couldn’t say that. He had promised! But then again, if he _did_ tell Sirius what Remus had said - only a little, no more than was necessary - he wouldn’t have to spy on Remus. Knowing Sirius, though, he would have to tell _everything_ as soon as the other Marauder realised that if Remus had told Peter about Lily Evans, he must also have told him about the rest. Sirius sometimes seemed to be able to _smell_ such things. But he couldn’t go spying on Remus either, could he now? Remus was a friend, and no matter what kind of nonsense had been going on in the last couple of days, spying on him was unethical. But... but, but, but. Oh, dilemma. Peter didn’t like being faced with dilemmas. Since stress did such highly suspicious things to his senses, he tended to make the wrong choice. And the worst part was that afterwards, he was still unable to tell if what he’d done was the right thing or not...

"I just think he doesn’t." Peter said with a helpless shrug of his shoulders, not looking Sirius in the eye.

Sirius grumbled. "To tell you the truth, me neither. But the idea’s got Prongs’s knickers in a mighty twist, and there’s just no living with him when he’s like that. And really, where’s the harm in it? It looks like Moony is too stubborn to help sort out this mess, so it’ll only do good."

Peter looked up just in time to notice that for a moment, Sirius looked like he had to convince himself that his words were true. He felt his heart sink. _Even Sirius doesn’t know what to do anymore..._

Then the door opened and a damp-haired James came in and said unceremoniously: "Will he do it?", startling Peter and Sirius. Sirius looked at Peter, who, after a final moment of hesitation, nodded. He may not be able to match his friends, but he was still a Gryffindor. He couldn’t just stand by watching the situation deteriorate and do nothing to change it!

"Great! See Prongs, I told you. We’ll know all about Remus’s romantic escapades soon enough."

"I guess." To Peter, it seemed James was trying not to sound too hopeful. "We’ll start once Remus leaves for his Prefect’s round, I take it?"

"I’m not sure yet. We’d have to know where he is and get Wormtail on his trail without him noticing, so we need a good starting position. You and me must not be seen, James, and if we want to be able to keep an eye on the progress of things we can’t give Wormtail the Map to find Remus’s current location."

Sirius and James went over the plans for at least half an hour before they finally deemed the risks and the possibility of failure acceptable, and all the while Peter could not help but think that it was like a bomb had gone off while he was in the Hospital Wing. One of the Muggle kind that sends things flying through the air in itty bitty pieces. Peter felt like he had landed on his head.  
  
  
  
That evening, Peter Pettigrew was mysteriously - though not quite notably - absent during dinner. If anyone found it strange that Sirius Black occasionally fed his lap crusts and bits of meat and vegetables, they were either Death Eater spies doing a truly lousy job, severely lacking in the exterior senses department, or suffering from memory loss. Possibly all three at once.

James and Sirius kept a covert eye on Remus all through the meal (though James couldn’t quite keep his mind focussed on Remus too, as the other Marauder was sitting right next to Lily Evans), waiting for him to finish eating and start doing whatever else he did in his friends’ absence. For such a scrawny boy, Remus could eat a lot. Though Sirius and James knew that his lycanthropy took a toll even outside the days of the full moon, they were muttering morosely for a full ten minutes before Remus was finally finished. James was beginning to develop a hatred against slow eaters.

Wormtail had begun to feel a bit dozy because of his full stomach and the warmth of Sirius’s lap - that thought didn’t even bother him anymore - when he came into abrupt contact with the ground.

"He’s leaving, hurry! Go, go!" Sirius hissed at the vicinity of his crotch. The Gryffindors around him didn’t blink an eye.

Shaking away the stars dancing before his eyes, Wormtail looked around and spotted the pair of shoes belonging to Remus. They passed by him on their way to the entrance hall, and with an uncomfortable shock, Wormtail realised that he would have to do quite a bit of running if he wanted to keep up with Remus for any amount of time while in his rat form. Dear Merlin, why hadn’t he thought of that before - like when he was trying to convince Sirius that it was a ridiculous plan? Sneaking around unnoticed and keeping up with people who were slowed down by their attempts at being stealthy was one thing, trying to follow someone who would rather be in a hurry was another. Sirius’s foot reminded him that he had best start running as soon as possible, lest their plans would be ruined before they even commenced.

With an inward squeak, Wormtail ran, dodging between legs of students and tables alike. Three-thirds along the Gryffindor table, he was gathering a good bit of speed when suddenly the fact that he was running under a table, in the body of a rat, between dozens of pairs of feet, and that this could never end well, made itself known to him. Someone moved the foot Wormtail dived underneath, down just a bit too quickly, and stepped on his tail. The high-pitched shriek he let out caused a clatter of cutlery and dishes on the tabletop above him. Several pairs of feet moved - away from him, luckily - as the owners jumped up, and loud, startled voices could be heard.

Wormtail ducked behind one of the table’s legs, his beady eyes watering in pain. A quick glance towards the open space between the Gryffindor table and the doors to the Great Hall showed that the shoes belonging to Remus were about to disappear into the Great Hall. After a moment of paralyzing uncertainty, the rat-animagus started running again, using the chaos above and around him as his cover to slip out of the room unnoticed, and panic raced through him with every heartbeat.

One look around the Entrance Hall had his distress rising to new heights. Remus was already at the bottom of the stairs! He would never be able to keep up with him! But as always, panic, combined with the knowledge that Sirius would be very disgruntled indeed if he messed up, was like rocket fuel. One would hardly have guessed that the muddy streak shooting across the marble floor was a rat on adrenaline.

Thinking it better not to stop for second thoughts, Wormtail relayed his initial course so that he was aimed straight at the stair’s left banister. Once he reached the staircase - Remus was almost at the top - he took a leap, halting the pumping movement of his tiny legs only long enough to push off and immediately resuming his previous movement. To his own exhilarating surprise, his plan worked; once his tiny feet touched the narrow straight surface the banister rested on, dangerously close to the sharp bend down to the stair’s steps, he shot forward with almost undiminished speed.

There was just enough space for him to run along. If he kept moving, he might make it all the way to the top in one go. One, two, three four five steps, ten steps - his limbs were pumping like mad, his chest felt like it was too small for the rest of his already minute body - fifteen steps, seventeen, twenty - _faster faster faster faster!_ his mind screamed. He was almost there, hold on now, just a few more steps - and he had made it!

And... he shot up, right into the domed sky, because gravity hadn’t noticed he’d run out of ground yet. Wormtail made a nice arc through the air and landed flat on his stomach.

For a moment all he could do was lay there, pant, and hope he wouldn’t have a heart attack. He didn’t know how real rats did it. Maybe it was the fact that he had only recently been able to gain an Animagus form - Sirius and James had succeeded much earlier than him - or the fact that his human body was less than slim and fit, but Wormtail didn’t think he would be able to survive for more than a week as a rat.

Where was Remus? Wormtail looked around blearily. If his rodent vocal cords had been able to produce an appropriate sound, he would have moaned. Time to go again...

This went on for at least another six stairs and a dozen corridors and hallways (he soon lost count of them due to lack of oxygen to his brain), until they arrived at the portrait of the Fat Lady. Wormtail was too late to sneak inside, but couldn’t bring him self to mind. He was too tired. Luckily, Remus reappeared shortly with his book bag slung over his shoulder. Not so luckily, this meant that Wormtail had to start running again.

The stairs were easier this time, though; after the first accidental slip on - or rather, off - the stairs between the sixth and fifth floors, he simply waited until Remus had descended to the floor below before dropping himself off the steps. The bruises wouldn’t show up until tomorrow, so no worries there!

When Remus settled in the library to study, Wormtail found himself a spot between two books on a low shelf from which he could keep an eye on the werewolf without being seen himself, and was able to recover a bit. Soon Wormtail had to fight to keep awake, his small black eyes drooping and his whiskers sagging.

He was absentmindedly considering the pros and cons of nibbling on a piece of book when Lily Evans appeared. Wormtail shot as upright as he could in the body of a rat and perked his ears while Lily approached Remus and put a hand on his shoulder.

He was unable to hear what she whispered in his ear that made his face fall, but her response of "And don’t even think about trying to get out of it, Remus Lupin." was loud and clear. Remus, he could see, did so anyway. "It’s no use Remus. The puppy eyes don’t work on me. I’m sorry to break it to you, but they’re not very effective at all. It makes you look strange, more like a wolf cub than a puppy."

Remus wasn’t the only person who stiffened at that off-handed comment. Luckily, Lily seemed to interpret the nervous chuckle Remus manage to wring from his throat as merely a confirmation of his failure to look cute and adorable as those traits were normally defined.

Upon Lily’s prompting, Remus began to pack is bag. Dreading the prospect of having to run after him again, Peter shot out of his hiding place when Remus walked away to put a few books back on Madame Pince’s shelves, and clambered into the book bag. Even while he tried to make himself invisible between the rolls of parchment and quills, a book hit Wormtail on the head - Remus’s copy of _Advanced Potion-Making_ , judging by the weight.

A bit dizzy and squashed, but otherwise conveniently stored away, Wormtail was carried away on Remus’s shoulder as Remus was figuratively dragged off by Lily. The small spy kept his ears strained, but the other two only made small talk. Almost forcibly so, he added to his mental notes.

After a while the book bag was put down. Wormtail almost got squashed again. He worked his way to the flap so he could see what was going on, as well as hear better.

They had arrived in an abandoned classroom. Remus stood awkwardly near the teacher’s desk while Lily walked around out of Wormtail’s line of sight and, by the sound of it, cast various spells. Curtains appeared before the windows and candles were lit. It looked almost romantic.

Hold on, romantic?

Lily reappeared and stood before Remus, her hands on her hips and her head cocked to the side. Remus stiffened under her gaze.

"We have a lot of work to do." Lily said, raising her wand. "So let’s get started."

With a flick of her wrist, Remus’s school robes were charmed to look like dressing robes. Another, and her own robes were transformed into an elegant ball gown. She nodded, pleased with the results.

"Brilliant. Now, my dear Remus, it is time for you to seduce me."

_What in the Heck?_ Wormtail thought.


	7. Bet You Didn’t See That Coming

Wormtail wasn’t sure what to make of the situation. Lily was trying to get Remus to seduce her, but Remus... well...

Lily was trying to make him ask her to dance, but all he had managed to do so far was stutter. To save the situation, she turned the tables and asked _him_ for a dance.

That got him talking.

"No, really, that’s very kind of you, but I couldn’t. My mother always taught me not to swim or run or dance within half an hour after a meal."

"Dinner was two hours ago."

"Well, I ate a lot more than usual today. You dragged me away from lunch and I missed breakfast, so I was really hungry."

"Remus, please..."

Remus sighed in defeat. "It’s not fair, you know. Your puppy eyes are much better than mine."

Lily laughed. "They’re actually kitty eyes. Much more effective than puppy eyes."

"Kitty eyes then. Alright, I will dance with you." Resigning himself to the inevitable, he let Lily take his hands and place them in the appropriate positions with merely a: "You are sure this is absolutely _necessary_ , aren’t you? You’re not just trying to get back at me for being such lousy company by letting me do things I’m extremely uncomfortable with?"

"Remus," Lily said gently. "you’re one of the nicest people I know. I enjoy your company immensely. This -" She flicked her wand, and a soft tune began to play. "- teaching you to relax, introducing you to romance the way a girl likes to see it - this is a gift. I want to see you use your charm to your advantage and convince the girl you like what a wonderful person you are." She tugged him along in a dance. Remus felt ready to faint, but pulled himself together before he could give her the wrong impression and insult her.

"Thank you, Lily." he said softly. "You don’t know how much it means to me to hear someone say that." She looked like she could guess. "I don’t know how I can ever repay you."

"I’ll be satisfied if you did your best to try and master what I am teaching you. So stop making faces, Remus. I understand that you’re nervous, because you’ve never done this before. But then try to at least _appear_ calm and collected. You’ll see that you’ll make friends much more easily when you seem self-confident. And once you get used to the situation your nervousness will simply disappear."

A laugh escaped Remus at the irony of what Lily was saying, a bitter laugh, because he knew that in his case, he had to get used to it over and over again every month, after the wolf had torn him apart and he was left to piece himself together again. But when Lily said it, the prospect seemed much less daunting, and instead almost something to look out for. Being so often shown how much your loved ones cared for you was a rare and precious thing. As long as you _had_ loved ones, at least...

To ward off the excessive seriousness that threatened to overtake him, Remus asked: "How do you manage to explain all the time you’re suddenly spending with me to your friends?"

"Oh, I just tell them it’s got to do with our Prefect’s duties. No big deal."

"And what about... Severus?"

"He doesn’t know about this, and as far as I am concerned, he never will." Lily said with a touch of frost in her voice, never taking her piercing green eyes off of Remus’s face. "Speaking of friends... are you and Potter and Black still..."

Remus nodded mutely, his curiosity about the state of Lily’s friendship with Severus Snape pushed to the back of his mind by his own problems. He regretted what had happened, and was was still going to happen. He wanted to give up on his foolish pride even more badly than he wanted to run away from Lily and her well-meant tutoring. But to give in to the urge to curl up into a little ball in a corner and cry would be cowardly. He couldn’t be that weak. His ‘pride’ was the only form of dignity he had left, so he would just need to learn to face life and bear it. It would be hard and full of disappointments, but Remus knew one thing for sure: he couldn’t spend the rest of his life in the state of seclusion he had been in as a young boy, and he couldn’t expect any more of his friends to pop up from a hole in the ground (or, more realistically, from behind the dormitory door, armed with pillows), latch onto him like leeches and forcibly drag him out of his shell. He wanted more from life than leftovers and charity, and if he wanted to get that, he needed to learn to go out and take it.

"They don’t always treat you that well, do they?" Lily asked tentatively.

Remus looked at her with a carefully neutral expression. "They’re not all that bad, you know. Most of the time." he said. "They don’t mean half of the things they say or do. It’s just... hard to talk to them, sometimes. Not like with you."

The ‘Code’ Sirius and James insisted on upholding (probably so that they would not constantly have to keep tabs on the two other, less unstoppable Marauders) had never seemed very effective to Remus when it really came down to it. It was supposed to be used in all sorts of distress, but in practice came down to a hotline for detentions, Slytherin-related issues, post-full moon depression and problems with homework and such. Solutions would usually be found through physical means or academic support, the alternative involving appropriate (or inappropriately large, depending on how you looked at it) amounts of chocolate or butterbeer and firewhiskey. _Real_ emotional support was not something any of the Marauders was very good at.

Lily smiled wryly, but the wary look in her eyes remained. "That seems to be the problem with a lot of boys. Their need to be macho makes them unable to be honest with themselves. And others."

Remus chuckled. "And of course I’m not nearly as macho as James and Sirius. So that’s probably where the hitch is."

"Hm. I doubt anyone could match the arrogance of Potter and Black if they tried. You’ll be alright, though. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders and your heart is in the right place. Where did you learn how to dance this well, by the way?"

"Huh?" Remus promptly tripped. "Oops."

Lily sniggered and helped him up. "We might have to come back on the dancing part later. Good thing there’s not a dance being held at Halloween, right Remus?"

"I’m sorry. It’s unladylike to have to take care of your crappy dancing partner."

"On the contrary, it’s all us girls tend to do when in male company. And don’t call yourself crappy."

Lily stopped the music, which had begun to become annoyingly repetitive, and set up a different scenario. She wanted to make sure that he would be prepared for anything he could possibly encounter, she explained, and would continue doing so until he could deal with it without feeling awkward. Charming their robes back to normal, she asked Remus to ‘take her out for a walk’.

"Just be a gentleman, like you normally are, and you’ll be fine."

"Alright." Remus offered her his arm with minimal awkwardness, and Lily laced her arm through his, pleased.

"Now imagine that I am Sheila -" She flicked her wand and an enlarged moving picture of the blond girl appeared before her face, floating there like a mask. "- and you are taking me out on a date. Where would you take me?"

"Uhm, Hogsmeade?" Remus offered, the corners of his mouth and one eyebrow twitching as he watched the illusion Lily had conjured.

"No duh. Be more specific."

"The Three Broomsticks?"

"How about you _ask_ her where she wants to go?"

"You’re not trying to turn me into one of those blokes who are henpecked by their girlfriends and only do what she wants him to do, are you?"

"Why, of course not! What gave you that outrageous idea?" Lily said jokingly.

"Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that you seem the type to have been a bra-burning feminist if you were a Muggle, or your dislike for macho men, or..."

_Sheila._ That would do it. Evidence as substantial as a name would be enough to convince even James. Now if only Wormtail knew a way to explain everything he’d seen and heard to James without causing a bloodbath...  
  
  
  
Sirius clapped him on the shoulder. "Good thinking, Wormtail. Better let me break the news to him."

They trudged up to their dormitory. Once there, Sirius abruptly threw the door open and bellowed: "HA! TOLD YOU SO!", surprising James enough to make him fall off his bed.

"Sirius!" Peter exclaimed, shocked.

"Sorry, I just couldn’t resist."

"What the Hell?" James stammered, sitting up.

"Remus is not after Lily Evans, but after a girl named Sheila... Carter, I’m guessing. Fourth year Hufflepuf, pale blond hair, eye colour undetermined, not particularly pretty but with nice cleavage, very quiet, rather boring over all." Sirius said, digging deeply in his mental archives.

"Lily is safe?" James whispered. When Sirius nodded, he slumped in relief and rolled onto his back with his hands over his face. "Oh, thank Merlin."

To Sirius, who rolled his eyes, he sounded like he had just received word that his execution had been cancelled. James tangled his hands in his hair and stared at the ceiling, a grin slowly forming on his face. Then suddenly, he jumped upright and punched the air, shouting: "YES!" Sirius humoured his best friend as said stag-animagus made a victory dance through the dormitory, cheering all the while. It soon began to get on his nerves, though.

"Alright James, you had your way." he said. "Can you stop acting like an idiot now?"

Toning down his wide grin, James complied by ending his dance. He enveloped Peter in a crushing hug and spun the small boy around, lifting his feet clean off the ground for a moment. "Thank you Wormtail, thank you! You wouldn’t believe how grateful I am. What did you find out? Tell me everything."

Sirius began to speak before Peter’s praise-induced-euphoria clouded mind could make him answer. He told, careful not to put too much emphasis on how intimate Lily’s actions were, about what Wormtail had observed. Though it still did not seem to sit entirely well with James that Remus was so close to Lily, his face lit up and a small smile formed on his lips as he heard how she had acted.

"That’s my girl." he muttered. Sirius gave him a weird look and raised a sceptical eyebrow, but his friend motioned for him to go on. James was particularly interested to hear what Remus had said about them.

"That’s great." he said once Sirius had recounted it, with some help from Peter to repeat the exact phrasing. "That means he’s not mad at us anymore. Or not so mad that he won’t listen to reason, at least."

Sirius mouth set in a grim line. "Hm." was all he said.

James went on: "I guess I should apologize, huh? He was kinda right, after all... My accusations were false." He ran a hand through his hair uncertainly. "Yeah. That’s what I’m going to do." Turning to Sirius, he said: "And I’m sorry for having been such a pain the last few days. Forgive me?"

"I know what you’re like." Sirius muttered with a shrug. "Evans messes with your mind. You don’t even realise it most of the time, so I can’t really blame you."

"Thanks, mate." James said with a sarcastically saccharine smile. "Glad to know you’re so optimistic about my mental health."  
  
  
  
"Hey, Remus?"

The pale boy looked up warily, at the figure standing in the doorway, his toothbrush still in his mouth. It must have occurred to Remus that James would be able to forcibly stop keep him from leaving if he wanted to - like Sirius had done the other night - from that position. So James smiled in what he hoped was an endearing, assuring way, and leaned on the doorpost so nonchalantly that nobody in their right mind could find his stance threatening.

"Look, I wanted to say I’m sorry about what happened downstairs. You were right, I was being paranoid."

Remus stared at him, his brow creased in thought. He turned back to the mirror to finish brushing his teeth, rinse his mouth and put his things away, the gears in his head churning almost visibly all the while.

Then he said: "So you’ve been spying on me." James’s cheeks coloured as Remus looked him straight in the eye. "You wouldn’t say that if you weren’t completely sure I’m not trying anything with Lily."

Ouch. Yes, it was true, his infatuation with Lily Evans bordered on obsession, James _realised_ that, but hearing his friends say it stung nonetheless.

"Yeah, okay, you caught on." he admitted reluctantly. "Like you said: I’m hard to get through to, sometimes."

Remus shook his head. "Sometimes you guys make me wish I could keep a sneakoscope on me, just to make sure nothing fishy is going on behind my back."

"Are you mad?" It was best to ask Remus that outright, as he usually didn’t let it show if he was. His recent outbursts had been quite shocking.

"How did you do it?"

"We asked Peter to follow you around in his rat form."

The werewolf looked at him with an unreadable expression for a while before he spoke. "I see." He sounded relieved, though not quite _happy_. "No, I’m not mad. I can’t say I hadn’t expected it."

"Can you forgive me for thinking you were after Lily?" He had better, because James did _not_ enjoy having to humble himself to the dust like this. Even if it _was_ for a friend’s sake.

"I was never mad at you for that."

James smiled gratefully. "You’re the best, Moony. So, we good?" He held out his hand.

"No." Remus said bluntly.

James was flabbergasted. "What? But -"

"I never said I was not angry. Just that your paranoia was not the cause."

"Then what is?!"

"You think on that." Remus said and walked past James, to bed.  
  
  
  
"It’s probably because I snubbed his girl. Implied she wouldn’t want him." James had concluded the next day.

He, Sirius and Peter were sitting by the fire in the Gryffindor common room. A stony faced Sirius was quickly gaining a lead on him in their daily contest of ‘who can get the highest marks with the least amount of effort’, because James was having a bit of trouble focusing his attention on his homework. Peter was sweating all over his Transfigurations essay, continuously sending pleading glances to Sirius and James. He would usually ask Remus for help, but as he was not with them, his silent pleas remained unanswered. And when James said that out of the blue, he became even quieter.

"I mean, what else could it be?" James continued. "The fact that I don’t blow my top each time one of you talk down on Evans and our relationship doesn’t mean he wouldn’t when it came to that Sheila girl. He’s always telling us to treat everyone as a potential Marauder, right? Fair and equal and all that."

"That’s a nice thought." Sirius muttered from behind his Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook. "We’re equal to the likes of Snivvelus to him."

James frowned in concern, but decided not to react to that comment. The dog-animagus had been in a sombre, brooding mood all day. And come to think of it, he hadn’t seemed to be quite himself last night, either. It was best to let him be for a while when he was like this. It would pass.

"The strange thing, though... Remus never gets mad. So why would he now? We made fun of his lack of a love life before and it never had this effect."

"There’s a saying in the English language. ‘The last straw.’ Ring any bells?" Sirius said.

_Ignore it. Just... ignore it,_ James told himself. _No matter how good it would make you feel, punching him will_ not _make him snap out of it faster._ But damn... Sirius couldn’t possibly be right in his unpleasant remarks. Okay, so they put some straws on Remus now and then. One would think, though, that accepting such a bad case of furriness without hesitation, and turning into Animagi to make up for the fact that they hadn’t been able to gain an Order of Merlin by being the ones to find a cure for lycanthropy, would count as the donation of a metaphorical cart with which to carry the haystack. And what would Sirius know about that, anyway?

"Did Remus tell you something you haven’t told me?" James asked quietly.

Sirius looked offended at the implication that he was keeping secrets from his best friend. "No. But I have a brain, you know."

"Merlin Padfoot, what is it with you today?"

"Nothing." Sirius snapped.

"Don’t give me that crap, Sirius. You’re just as bad as Moony sometimes."

Sirius sent him a smouldering look before turning back to his book. He refused to look at or answer to James after that, and James was not in the mood to make a scene just to press the issue. He looked at his own homework and abruptly shoved it away. He’d do it later. Thoughts of Remus had been bothering him all day, and now Sirius was bothering him as well. He wanted to solve at least one of the puzzles called His Friends before having to think about homework. And since Sirius seemed to even moodier than he’d thought, that left Remus. At least he had sounded like he’d been talking according to reason.

Alright then. What could have made Remus so mad? Sirius had basically said that he’d never be able to get a girl, and then he himself had repeated the sentiment. And why not? Girls were, as far as they were able to tell, only interested in fraternal relationships with Remus. He never made a hit with anyone, and until three days ago, he had never seemed particularly interested in the other sex. So naturally, they had been surprised. Maybe Sirius was right after all: maybe they had reacted like that once too often. But James really was concerned about the results Remus would meet, and he understood Lily’s reason for wanting to help Remus. Even if he didn’t... like... it...

_That’s it! Of course! Why didn’t I think of that before?_

James laughed out loud.

"I know!" he said, jumping up. He looked at Sirius and Peter excitedly. "Lily is busy preparing Remus for Halloween, so why don’t we make sure Sheila is ready as well? Ah?" He spread his arms, a wide grin on his face. "That’s sure to show Moony that we support him and his decisions. Well, what do you say?"

Looking confused and flustered, Peter said: "T - that’s a great idea, Prongs."

James turned to Sirius, eyebrows raised in expectation. Sirius scowled and pointedly looked down at his book, sagging lazily in his chair.

"Sirius?"

No answer.

"Sirius!"

The same result.

"Oh come on Padfoot, is this really necessary? I know you’re cranky, but this is Remus we’re talking about. Remember him? He’s the friend with the furry little problem you insulted a few days ago and who has refused to have a normal conversation with either of us ever since."

"Don’t remind me." Sirius snarled, slamming his book down on the arm-rest of his chair and jumping up so he stood face to face with James. "If you want to want to help him get his girl then fine, but don’t think I’m going to help too. I’ve done my share. Now leave me alone."

"What?" James said, utterly confused. "Sirius, what’s gotten into you? You were the one who insisted on proving Moony’s innocence, so why the sudden -"

"I did that for _you_ , not for him. I’m not doing anything to help that prick."

James stared at him with wide eyes. "Sirius..."

"Don’t ‘Sirius’ me." the dog-animagus raged on, beginning to get really riled up. "He insulted me, the dirty hypocrite, and I’m not taking it."

"But you insulted him first!"

"I’m not taking it!" Sirius repeated so loudly, heads were turned. He snatched up his Defence book, rolls of parchment and quills. Shaking off the hand James put on his shoulder, he stomped off in the direction of the dormitories.

At the bottom of the stairs he paused briefly, turned and yelled through the common room: "Did anyone here see my screwdriver?"

He was answered with a variety of mumblings to the extent of "No, sorry." and "What’s a screwdriver?".

"Okay, fine." he snapped, and stomped up the stairs.

As he stared after his best friend, James, for some reason, got the feeling that this was how the other Marauders must feel when he threw a fit over Lily. It was infuriating. How did they put up with him?


	8. Somebody Tell Me I’m Dreaming

James was not sure how he had landed himself in his current state of horrified shock. Well, he was (Sirius had left, he had realised he hadn’t been paying attention when Sirius had talked about Sheila the day before, he asked Peter to repeat what he had found out, and Peter had), but it was hard to believe he had actually let it happen the way it had happened. Yet, he had, and it had, and... oh, bloody Hell. Why hadn’t he paid more attention before, when Sirius explained the situation, instead of acting like a moron over Evans? If he’d noticed before, he might have... well, he wasn’t sure what he could have done, but at least he would have known sooner!

"Please don’t tell me you just said her last name was Carter." he said faintly, sagging into the overstuffed chair. He saw Peter adopt a helpless look and groaned, dropping his head into his hands. "Of all the girls Remus could have picked..."

"W - what’s wrong?"

"If her last name is Carter, and she’s a Hufflepuff, then she has got to be the little sister of Nick and Cain Carter."

"They sound familiar..." Peter said uncertainly.

"I’m sure I’ve yelled their names in my nightmares some time or other. They’re Hufflepuff’s Beaters, Wormtail! They’re tall, muscular seventh-years, and they tend to crack their knuckles whenever someone looks at their little sister funnily."

Peter paled dramatically, but James paid it no heed; he did that a lot. James ran an uncertain hand through his hair, wracking his brains for any and all knowledge he had on Sheila Carter.

"So, Sheila Carter, Sheila Carter... Fourth year Hufflepuff. Blond and short for her age. Looks suspiciously Malfoyish, but her family is full of Muggle-borns. Two bloodthirsty older brothers - or actually, three, but Conrad has already graduated. He’s an astrologer now, I think. The Carter mother is dead... I guess that’s why the brothers are so protective of Sheila. She’s really quiet, though she doesn’t seem to be boring or unintelligent. On weekends, she usually wears an orange dress. Nice boobs, though her face is a bit plain. Her eyes are a grey. Best subject is Herbology, worst DADA. She wears a rather expensive perfume."

If she was the type Sirius called ‘boring’, James did not want to find out what kind of girls his hot-tempered friend found ‘interesting’.

Peter looked surprised. "Wow, you sure know a lot about her."

James shrugged, though a blush crept up to his face. "She used to wear glasses up until a year or so ago, and I keep tabs on everyone inside Hogwarts who wears glasses."

"Oh... because you wear glasses yourself, right?" Peter said, understanding lighting up his face.

"Yeah yeah, because I wear glasses myself." James confirmed irritably. It wasn’t like he could help it that he used to get teased about his glasses by the kids in the Muggle pre-school his mother had insisted he went to. (At least, until that time he had gotten so jealous of the boy who’d been chosen to play Peter Pan in the school musical that young James had decided to ‘out-perform’ him on the big night by wrapping his father’s invisibility cloak around his toy broomstick and showing him how flying really went. Half of the Muggles in Godric’s Hollow had had to be obliviated, and the Ministry of Magic had banned James Fleamont Potter from Muggle education for life.)

"But that’s not important. What we need to do, is find out if Sheila has any feelings for Remus, and if so, what those are. If she doesn’t like Remus the way Remus likes her, he has a problem. If he tries anything at all, he won’t have just a pissed off girl to deal with, but two eight foot tall gorillas - with brains this time, unlike Crabbe and Goyle - out for his blood."

Peter looked incredulous. To his annoyance, James realised that this probably had more to do with his implication that Remus would ‘try something’ than the ‘eight foot tall’ comment, which was, though exaggerated, admittedly more realistic than the idea that Remus would start bothering Sheila if she didn’t like him back. Even Wormtail was turning against him - his loyal follower, the one who worshipped the ground he stood on, was turning against him!

Peter came as far as a tentative "Remus isn’t like y-" before he noticed James’s glare and silenced himself abruptly.

"At any rate, we need to do something." James said, cutting off any and all comments Peter might have wanted to make as he stood up from his chair by the fire and started gathering his things. It was getting late. Maybe he would be able to think more clearly in the morning, after a night’s sleep had cleared his head for a bit. "If Remus raises one finger towards the Carter girl, Nick and Cain will jinx him into bits. We need to do something to prevent that from happening."

"So... what will we do?" Peter asked uncertainly.

"We find out whether Sheila is interested in Remus." James said without elaborating. The only way he could currently think of doing that was to ask her or her friends, which would ruin everything. Spoiling Remus’s surprise would not help matters if they wanted to make it up to him. "And if necessary, we then find out how to keep Nick and Cain Carter from cursing Remus to next Thursday."

Of course Peter would have to ask the one question James had no answer to. "How?"

The next morning at breakfast, James kept an eye on Sheila Carter while Peter kept an eye on Remus and Sirius. The former still stubbornly refused to sit anywhere near them, while the latter seemed to merely stay present to carp at everything they did.

Every now and then, James was able to get a glimpse of the girl that had sparked so much controversy from between the broad shoulders of two seventh years with long, dark hair. Sheila was a petite figure - tiny compared to her big brothers. The family resemblance was hard to find, but the bond they shared was unmistakable to anyone who watched them together. If he thought rationally, James was forced to admit that the Carter brothers, always laughing, always trying to cheer their little sister up and hit on the girls while they were at it, were not violent or aggressive at all except for on the Quidditch field. And seeing Remus’s frail, delicate eye catch made the feeling that their protectiveness was no more than justified almost convincing. But they were so _intimidating_... No wonder Sheila was so quiet. If she made even the slightest sound of discontent, her brothers were all over her. Even the Slytherin team, which was full of human gorillas as of late, was wary of Hufflepuff’s Beaters. James had been forced to retreat from their towering forms too often in the tense days before Quidditch games to feel comfortable with the knowledge that Remus would have to face them in order to get to Sheila.

But he didn’t know what to do about it. It was driving him nuts. The only safe option he could think of was to stop Remus from trying to woo Sheila; the only option not available. They couldn’t ask Sheila about her feelings directly, which automatically ruled out any chance that they could get her to convince her brothers to leave Remus alone. Would they perhaps be able to approach the twins directly? It would be tricky. There was no guarantee that they wouldn’t disapprove of the entire plan and tell Sheila, or opt to scare Remus off anyway.

Not to mention the fact that Remus was a werewolf. If the thing Remus had for Sheila was similar to James’s predestined love for Lily, that would eventually pose an even bigger problem in the future. The way the Carters were now, they would never accept it, would never let a Dark creature near their sister, no matter the kind of person he was in between full moons. It dawned on James that making the decision to do this must have been a hard one for Remus. Merlin, no wonder he was so upset about the way they had reacted...

No matter how hard he tried, the solution kept evading James as he ignored the professors of that day. He kept getting stuck, and the fact that Sirius stayed moody and Peter seemed to be getting more nervous by the hour didn’t help any. There seemed to be no way at all to help Remus without hindering him at the same time. Yes, they could use the Cloak, or have Wormtail spy on Sheila in his rat form to search for clues as to the state of Sheila’s love life, but that method could remain ineffective for weeks, and they only had until Halloween. They needed to get their hands on this information before Remus made his move.

James stared moodily at Professor Kettleburn’s hippogrifs, one elbow resting on his knee and his head propped up on a fist, not paying the least amount of attention to what the professor was saying. Most confidential conversations, like the ones girls confessed their crushes in, were carried out in the safety of dorms; out of reach for boys. Asking her friends would be suspicious. She would surely find out about their inquiries. Girls seemed unable to keep secrets...

Then, as he, Sirius and Peter came back from Care of Magical Creatures, their last class on Monday, James saw a flash of copper on the marble steps leading up to the great double doors, flaring up like a beacon in the pale, sharp autumn sunlight, and it came to him.

Lily.

The animagi Marauders were not the only ones whose minds were occupied by Remus. He had been sauntering around the edge of Lily Evans’s thoughts from the moment he asked her where he could find McGonagall.

She still felt a little guilty about searching Remus’s belongings, despite - or maybe because - of the ‘lessons’ she was giving him now. She felt like a hypocrit. Each time she looked at him in class, wrapped up in what the teacher was saying, or saw that mellow half-smile of his as he helped and encouraged insecure first-years, she couldn’t help but hear Severus’s voice... _Werewolf._

Lily’s heart refused to acknowledge the theory. There was no way sweet, kind Remus could be - but she had seen it happen before, hadn’t she, had seen how a guilty conscious or fear of discovery could turn someone into a better person. Oh, sure, now Remus was as bad as she was? No, she refused to believe that his good nature was anything other than genuine. And still...

_No!_ she told herself firmly for what seemed like the millionth time that year, glaring at the book-case before her. Severus’s so-called ‘evidence’ was nowhere near sufficient, and he hated everything to do with the Marauders in the first place, and even if something fishy _was_ going on with her fellow Prefect, there was no way Dumbledore did not know about it, and if Headmaster Dumbledore let him stay at Hogwarts, then it was not up to her to place doubts by that decision.

Lily sighed and ran a hand over the spine of an age-worn book. It was a bad habit, sticking her nose in other people’s business, but one she was almost loath to give up, despite the trouble it frequently got her in. She shouldn’t have done it; she should have trusted Remus to tell her. But her concern had proven to be stronger, and it haddened really mattered what Severus said about him, in the end. He was a sweet boy, just a bad judge when it came to his friends. Lily would hate to see him get into trouble because of those ‘Marauders’. If making sure he was alright meant violating his privacy, well... then that would be what it took. He would never have to know, and it really was for his own good.

Remus and his predicaments distracted her so effectively she didn’t even notice Potter approach her in the library, where she was absentmindedly perusing a shelf full of books on non-verbal spells, until it was too late.

"Evans?"

She whipped around to face the voice, her hand already halfway to where she kept her wand. Much to her surprise, though, Potter stood more than an arm’s length away from her, and he had his hands raised into the air in a gesture of harmlessness.

"What do you want, Potter?" Lily snapped, hiding her confusion behind irritation.

"I know what you’re thinking, Evans - Merlin knows I’m thinking it too - but believe it or not, I am not here to ask you out on a date."

Lily frowned. "Sure, and pigs fly of their own acco-"

"No, seriously," Potter cut in quickly. "I’m here for Remus."

Lily stopped. She saw him look hopeful. Lily deepened her frown. She saw his face fall.

"Really." she said in an icy voice. "If I remember correctly, you were yelling at him not even two days ago, about _me_."

"W - well, yes, that’s true, but -" Potter stammered.

"I told you to leave Remus alone, Potter, and Remus doesn’t want anything to do with you at the moment. So tell me how this is not about me? Using your own friends as an excuse is low, even for you."

For a moment, it looked as though Potter felt genuinely hurt. "It’s not an excuse, Evans." he said through gritted teeth. "We made up - well, partly made up. But he still won’t talk to us, so we want to make it up to him for real. It’s just that... I think we need you to do that."

He told her that he and Black had realised they had been wrong and had done the right thing by apologizing to Remus for their behaviour (which Lily was not sure she believed) and that Remus had said he was not angry about the things they had apologized for (which she found much more plausible, as she doubted Potter and Black could comprehend cheese dip, let alone real human emotion) and that now, Remus still refused to talk to them. (Lily was with Remus on that.) He also explained that they were really sorry, and that they wanted to make it up to Remus somehow. Their plan?

"Prepare Sheila for Remus." Lily deadpanned. Why did that sound familiar?

James nodded eagerly. "Yes! Isn’t it perfect? When we do that, Remus will know that we _do_ support him. We... sort of gave him the impression we didn’t, and I think that’s why he’s angry at us."

It took a moment for Lily’s mind to stop reeling. Was she hallucinating or something? Had her wish that the smart, handsome, funny, but infinitely annoying James Potter would be capable of being a sweet boy who cared for others beside himself, finally gotten the better of her? Was this even James Potter? The Potter she knew seemed to be physically unable to refrain from making vulgar insinuations or jinxing people who annoyed him. If he meant what he was telling her now, that meant that there was possibly more to him than Lily had ever been able to imagine.

Yet... how could she tell if his intentions were pure? Maybe they just wanted Remus back on their side because they needed him for one of their immature pranks. And Potter could tell her all the stories he wanted, but what about Black? The row those two had had in the common room the previous day had sparked a round of gossip that had not escaped Lily’s notice. The infamous ‘Marauders’ were falling apart, it seemed. Who was she - a Prefect - to prevent the demise of the most troublesome gang the school had known in years? Besides, if the Marauders were to disband, then maybe Remus would be able to find some decent friends for a change.

Lily crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Has it ever occurred to you that maybe Remus simply doesn’t want you guys to be involved in his love life?"

"I know he’s mad at us at the moment." James said. He looked her straight in the eye, which unsettled Lily somewhat, because his expression was entirely serious; she’d never seen him like that before. "And I know we deserve it. But we’ve always stood by him when he needed us. We’ve been his friends through even the hardest of times and we’re not about to abandon him now because of some petty grudge."

His expression became almost pleading when he saw the scepticism on Lily’s face. He could have saved himself the trouble; Lily’s mind had momentarily wandered out of the physical Potter’s reach as she contemplated whether the infamous James I-Hate-Everything-Related-To-The-Dark-Arts Potter would ever befriend a dark creature, let alone stick up for one like Potter often did for Remus. But what did he mean with ‘the hardest times’?

_No! Cut - It - Out! Remus is ill, it runs in his family, and that’s the end of it._

_"Look Evans, I know you don’t think very highly of me, or the Marauders, but I mean it. He means a lot to the three of us, and I don’t believe for a second that he’d be happy if we never talked to each other again."_

_He did have a point there. Despite what Lily thought of the entire situation, Remus had been sombre ever since the first argument with his friends. Lily had reasoned that he may just needed to get used to the change, but a seed of doubt had sprung up in her mind. Potter seemed sincere... And whatever inhibitions she may have, she had to admit that his offer was tempting. There was only so much Lily could accomplish by assisting Remus himself. Sheila was still an uncertain factor in the equation, one that greatly worried her. Maybe, if she did what Potter asked... hm. The Marauders themselves would not even pose a risk. If she got involved in their plans, she might be able to stop them from doing anything that would hurt Remus again._

_Shaking off the thought that she was acting like a Slytherin, Lily said: "Alright. I’ll work with you. But you can’t force me to do anything, and when I think you’re crossing the line in any way, I _will_ inform Remus of your meddlesome scheming. And if you even hint at breaking school rules, points will be deducted from all three of you."_

_James looked like he couldn’t believe his luck. A wide grin spread over his face as he said: "Really? Oh Merlin, this is such good news. Thank you, Lily, _thank you._ I don’t know how to thank you for this. I could kiss you! Crap, no - not like that, really, I don’t mean anything by it! I would kiss a hippogriff if it’d said what you just said."_

__A hippogriff?_ _

__Still grinning from ear to ear, James explained. "We only had a rough sketch as of yet, and before I thought of asking you it seemed impossible, but with your help, it might just be enough. We’d like you to approach Sheila Carter and find out if she fancies anyone. It would be perfect if you could find out if she likes Remus or would be interested in him as a boyfriend, but we must not let her know what’s going on. That’s very important - if Sheila were to find out about our or Remus’s plans, that would spoil everything. We’re trying to help Remus, not ruin his schemes. Also, if it is in any way possible - again without raising suspicions - we need to find out how Sheila’s brothers think about Remus."_ _

__"Her brothers?" Lily interrupted. "What do they have to do with anything?"_ _

__"You don’t have any brothers, do you?" James asked._ _

__"Neither do you." she countered._ _

__"Well, no, but I’m a guy, I know how things like this work... If I had a little sister, I’d sure as Hell wouldn’t stand for it if someone I didn’t approve of tried to make a move on her." Lily noticed he looked rather pale. "And since Nick and Cain Carter are Hufflepuff’s Beaters..."_ _

__Lily guessed that she must have turned equally pale when that little detail came back to her. "I’ll see what I can do." she promised._ _

__James looked at her with an expression of wonder. "Thanks, Evans. Really. This means a lot to me. And the others as well."_ _

__"Don’t get your hopes up, Potter. I’m just doing this for Remus." she warned. But who the warning was meant for, she wasn’t entirely sure. He hesitated, and then awkwardly stuck out his hand. After a moment of confusion and doubt, Lily took it._ _

__That must have been the first time they had any physical contact that did not result in violence. Some part of Lily wished they’d started out like this from the very beginning._ _

__When James returned to his dorm, he was almost floating._ _

__"What have you been smoking?" was Sirius’s logical first reaction._ _

__James dropped himself on his bed and stared at the top of his canopy dreamily, cradling his right hand to his chest. "Lily agreed to help us." he sighed, before drifting back into paradise. He imagined he could still feel the touch of her hand against his._ _

__"That’s great news!" Peter exclaimed._ _

__Sirius snorted. "I’m sure you’re still sore from your last assignment, aren’t you, little rat?"_ _

__"Cut it out, would you, Sirius? He’s right, you know..."_ _

__"Look who’s talking!" Sirius snapped at his best friend._ _

__Said friend looked at him oddly. "But Lily talked to me. She didn’t slap or hex me, she didn’t even shout at me once in the entire conversation!"_ _

__If anything, this scared Sirius. James wasn’t sure how or why, but the he seemed more concerned than annoyed when he went back to his tinkering. Sirius was trying to construct a machine of some sort (and had been for some time now), but without a screwdriver, he wasn’t getting very far. James let it all slide, still feeling too overwhelmed by the time he had spent talking to Lily to concentrate on anything else. Silence settled in the dormitory, for a while only broken by the scribbling of Peter’s quill on his parchment, the tinkering of Sirius’s mysterious Muggle contraptions, and Sirius’s under-his-breath mutterings, which went roughly along the lines of "Damn Muggles for making me need a screwdriver I don’t have." and "Yoko bloody Ono."._ _

__Then suddenly, Sirius threw down his things and said, frustration evident in his voice: "If Remus really wants a girl that messes around with her appearence that badly, why can’t he wait a few years? My baby cousin Nymphadora would be perfect for him."_ _

__"You have a cousin?" Peter asked stupidly._ _

__"One you’d hook Remus up with?" James asked more intelligently. He sat up, frowning through the remnants of his euphoria. "Bloody Hell Padfoot, you’re not making any sense anymore. I thought you didn’t want to help Remus get a girl."_ _

__"T - this is different." Sirius spluttered._ _

__"How?"_ _

__"Because Nymphadora is only two years old!"_ _

__"You can’t possibly think of hooking Remus up with a toddler!" James exclaimed._ _

__"My point exactly!"_ _

__Sirius then did what he seemed to be doing a lot lately: he threw his things sloppily into his trunk and left, claiming he’d be working on the paint-filled dungbombs and did not wish to be disturbed, leaving James with the urge to just give up on trying to understand his friend’s unpredictable mood swings._ _

_For some reason, Lily felt offended. But she ignored the feeling and focussed on the matter at hand. "So, what did you have in mind for me to do?"_ Lily forcibly dragged herself back to the conversation and situation at hand.


	9. Please Play Nicely

"Are you sure Lily is okay with this, Prongs?" Peter asked doubtfully. His hands were beginning to ache from the amount of wringing he had made them do over the past few days. These aforementioned days, it seemed he couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. It was driving him nuts, and his nerves were beginning to play up. James seemed to have no such worries, though.

"Of course I am!" the bespectacled boy replied flippantly. He withdrew his head from the corner he’d been peering around, a dreamy grin on his face. "We’re mates now, remember? We’re even partners in crime for this operation. Surely she won’t mind us keeping an eye out for her."

"Oh, is that what you’re calling it now?" asked an icy voice.

James jumped so high, Peter got the impression he could have leaped right over his head.

"Lily!" James exclaimed, clutching at his heart as he looked at the redhead with the sternly crossed arms that had suddenly appeared behind him. "What are you doing here, weren’t you just about to go talk to Sheila?"

"Us working together is not an excuse for you to stalk me, Potter." Lily said, jabbing a finger at his chest. "If you want to help me, then stay away. Having you two skulking after me all the time while I’m supposed to strike up a casual conversation is _not_ helpful."

"But Lily, I thought we -"

"Get lost, Potter, or I’ll deduct ten points from Gryffindor for harassing a Prefect!"

James retreated with his tail between his legs, and a squirming Peter in tow.

Sirius sat slumped against the bathroom wall, his head resting back against the cool tiles. His eyes were wide and staring, but he was hardly aware of the ceiling and walls occupying his vision. This was the second time within a week that he was sitting on the ground with his back against a wall, feeling miserable. But this time James was not with him.

He wanted to get angry. He was _supposed_ to get angry. It was how he coped with things. Sirius Black did not take... well, anything, lying down. He fought back when he was attacked, he rebelled when he was oppressed, he broke the rules when they limited him, he hexed people’s arses when they annoyed him. When life punched Sirius in the face, Sirius punched right back. Preferably with no questions asked. Anger first, regret... what regret? Fuck regret!

But now... even when he managed to find a spark of anger, he couldn’t get it to flare up. Something choked the embers before they could come alive.

_Remus... my friend._

Sirius wanted to get angry, but he couldn’t. Oh, he could pretend he was. He could even make himself believe he was, under the right circumstances. He still had a whole lot of pent up frustration left. But without true anger to fuel that part of his personality, the misery was rapidly gaining territory.

_I can’t deal with this..._ Sirius realised, his Adam’s apple bopping up and down on the rhythm of his convulsive swallowing. The ceiling became a simmering blur, even though he blinked his eyes rapidly. _That’s why I keep on running away. That’s why I’m hiding._

He had tried to keep the thoughts out of his mind, to keep his head empty for as long as possible, but eventually the thoughts and feelings simply slapped him in the face to get his attention. And unfortunately, life had slapped Sirius in the face so often that out of sheer self-defence, he had had to insert a rule into his psyche that forbade him to use the kind of counter-measures he usually took against life, against himself.

Not to say the ignorant treatment had been a failure, though. It had worked fine as long as enough had been going on to distract him. Act like you don’t care. Just have fun and ignore everything else. And when it doesn’t let itself be ignored, kick it until it goes away. Under normal circumstances, it worked like a giggling charm, or so Sirius always told himself.

This time, however, there was a problem: the thing blocking his view on blissful ignorance was his band of friends, and he could not kick them. Sirius himself would be the first to admit that he cared about nothing in life but himself and the Marauders. Kicking his friends would equal kicking himself, and he didn’t allow himself to do that. Never mind the fact he had already broken that rule and was starting to violate it even further by mentally kicking himself for what had happened. It was all his fault, after all. By now, he realised that he had been the first to screw up. _He_ had gone too far, so it was his own fault Remus had gotten mad, punched him, and called him...

Sirius clenched his eyes shut, drew his sprawled legs up to his chest and rested his face in his knees.

"Don’t think like that, stop it, don’t think like that, don’t think like that..." he mumbled in a choked voice, trying to drown out the voice in his head that sounded so much like his father, telling him he was a worthless son and was finally getting what he deserved - and the voice of his mother, sneering that he was a Black, would always be a Black, and should just stop trying to deny it.

Then he realised just how pathetic he was acting, found a tiny flint of anger, and straightened abruptly, banging his head against the wall and welcoming the pain.

_Oh mother, father, you did a truly fine job of fucking your oldest son up in the head._

Sirius didn’t like having to do in-depth soul-searching. He didn’t like it at all.

Theoretically speaking (because taking it personally was simply unbearable), he should be able to end the madness in two ways. The first option was to forgive Remus everything, take the blame entirely onto himself, grovel at Remus’s feet and hope for the werewolf’s honour and compassion to do the rest of the work. The second was to decide it was all Remus’s fault, clear himself of all blame, get truly and deeply furious at Remus, and act accordingly. Neither option was available, however, and he just couldn’t bring himself to break down the barriers preventing him from taking either route... yet? As it was, he was unable to give up on either of the two most important things in his life - his sense of self-worth and his friendships - and he dreaded the day he might be so far gone that he would be forced to do one of those things just to stay sane.

So, even after having debated, theorized, plotted, tried and tried and searched the present for any other way into the future, for so long his lower body had gone numb from sitting still on the cold floor, he was still stuck in the agonizing stretch of in-between.

_And Remus probably doesn’t even care..._

Sirius suddenly yearned for the black hole at the bottom of a bottle of firewhiskey. Knowing that was a bad idea, though, he instead focussed his attention on the bag of supplies he had brought with him into the bathroom. The problem with the stench-absorbing paint would keep his mind occupied for a while. And it would be a lot less messy than his previous train of thought.

When Sirius got back to the dorm that night, he felt as sore in the head as the dejected James looked. He had no answer when his best friend tiredly asked him for an explanation of his recent self-contradictory behaviour.

Remus had been dreading Wednesday, when he would have the entire midday off with no homework to do, because he had been spending all the time not claimed by Lily or McGonagall in the library as of late. And when Wednesday came, his fears were confirmed.

He ascended the stairs to the boys’ dormitories with lead in his shoes, knowing that he would have to go up, but fearing a possible confrontation with his dorm mates. His friends. The Marauders. The guys he had truly and utterly screwed up with.

Not for the first time, Remus wondered if his pride was really worth the risk of losing his friends over. It felt like a very Sirius thing to do, and as much has Remus liked Sirius, he was well aware of the trouble the Sirius-approach could cause. The situation they were all in now was a prime example. Remus was beginning to think that while having one Sirius around might be bothersome to the point of gastric ulcers and nervous breakdowns (if Remus hadn’t known better, he might have attributed the curse on the DADA position solely to Sirius), one Sirius and another person acting too much like him would make the position of test subject for Death Eater torture practice look like fun in comparison.

Remus was well on his way to thinking himself into a doom and gloom state when he arrived at the topmost landing. He stopped to listen for any sounds behind the closed door and already wanted to groan at the voices he picked up before he really heard what they were saying.

"- can’t honestly expect results _already?_ " a voice that was definitely Sirius’s said disdainfully. "If girls are anything like us men, they’re not going to spill all their secrets as soon as you’ve said your mutual ‘Hello’s."

"This coming from the greatest misogynist this side of the equator." James shot back.

"Oh, don’t get me started on women, Mr. My Brain Was Taken Over By My Dick, Please Come Cure Me, Lily Sodding Evans!"

"Guys, please!" Peter’s squeak came even faster than James’s insult to Sirius’s manhood. But James hated to have to disappoint his admirers, so Remus wasn’t entirely surprised to find that this time, his common sense triumphed over his obsession with Lily. What did surprise him, however, was what James said next. Who on Earth could they be talking about?

"At any rate, no successful contact has been made yet -"

"So you _do_ realise women are a dangerous alien species?"

"- shut up Sirius - but we’re not about to give up this early on -"

"‘We’? Are you sure about that ‘we’ part? Because ‘we’ implies two people working together, and usually _voluntarily_ , instead of -"

"Shut _up_ , Sirius!"

"Shut _up_ , Sirius." Sirius mimicked in a high, nasally voice.

"As I was saying," James resumed loudly, as not to give Sirius any more opportunity to interrupt. "We’re not going to give up on trying to get Sheila to talk to us, even though she didn’t respond to -"

The door was blasted open before Remus’s brain had even caught up with his ears.

"Leave Sheila alone!" he shouted at Sirius, James and Peter, who were still mid-yelp.

"R - Remus!" James spluttered, nervously adjusting his glasses, which had almost fallen off his nose. "What - How - w - b -"

"I said, leave Sheila alone, that’s _what_ and that’s _how_. And that’s final!" Remus said, using the voice Lily had taught him to use when confronted with dense opposition while fulfilling his tasks as a Prefect. I involved speaking slowly and carefully, but with a sharp, forceful edge as not to give one’s victim the impression that they might get away with doing anything other than what they were told. He was therefore quite surprised James was able to come up with a rebuttal.

"Look, Remus, I can explain - we’re trying to _help_ you. We’re just trying to get Sheila to open up to us so we can -"

"I don’t want your ruddy help!" Remus exclaimed, momentarily losing control over his voice. So they really thought he would never be able to get a girl without their help. That apart from being their source of midnight adventures and hard-to-get resources, he wasn’t at anything, wasn’t worth anything.

"But Sheila’s brothers -"

"What about them?" Remus snapped, distaste mingling with his anger. James always had to butt in on everything he did, he was most likely fishing for an excuse now.

"They’re tall and broad-shouldered and heavy and aggressive and Hufflepuff’s beaters and _aggressive_ , and -"

"Oh, please." Remus said, looking at James in disgust. "You think I hadn’t noticed? So, they’re big and strong, so what? I’m Prefect, dimwit. I help Sheila with her school work and protect her from getting mauled in the halls. Nick and Cain _like_ me."

That was not _entirely_ true, but James didn’t have to know that, and besides, Remus had good hope that one day, it would be.

James stared at him, his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish. "But..." he managed to squeak.

"No buts. I don’t want you anywhere near Sheila, you’ll only mess everything up. _Stay away from her._ "

"Fine by me." Sirius muttered from his bed. He had been watching the exchange with narrowed eyes the entire time, making faces and muttering insults under his breath. Peter was trying to hide behind one his own bed poles, and failing miserably.

"Bloody Hell, Sirius, if you’re not going to help anyway, just stay out of this!" James snapped. He turned back to Remus, his patience all but spent. "And you, when are you going to get over this stupid new phase of yours? You’ve made your point, so for Merlin’s sake let go of it already!"

Remus suddenly remembered exactly why all the trouble he’d been going through the past week was worth it.

"I think you still haven’t quite understood me." he said, forcing his voice down to an icy whisper. "Leave Sheila Carter alone, or I’ll start deducting points from Gryffindor to make up for all the times I let you guys off the hook."

He flung his book bag onto his bed and left Gryffindor Tower. He didn’t know where he could go or what he might do, but he had to get away before the full range of his emotions would show on his face.

This time, Lily was the one peering around a corner.

"Lily?"

And the one getting the fright of her life, too.

"James!" She clutched at her heart and she looked at him with wide eyes. "I - I mean, Potter! What are you doing here?" Suddenly her eyes narrowed. "Are you spying on me again?"

"No Lily, I’m not spying on you..." James sighed, running a hand through his hair uncertainly. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to let this chance to get closer to Lily go to waste. But... even in secret, for Remus’s own good, it didn’t feel right to James to go against his friend’s express wishes. Especially since he’d already made such a mess of things by accusing Remus of trying to make a move on Lily. Contrary to popular belief, James was aware of the fact that Lily was not ‘his’. Oh, he would never admit to it out loud, but he knew, alright. And when it came down to it, he couldn’t risk losing his existing friendship with Remus for a chance to start one (however meagre it might be) with Lily Evans.

"We’re aborting the plan." he confessed, making Lily’s jaw drop.

"What?! But why? After going through all this trouble..."

James made a helpless gesture with his arms. "Remus walked in on us while we were talking about it, and he... well, he forbade us from coming near Sheila, and basically told us to sod off." He didn’t mention the fact that Remus had turned Prefect on them. Lily did not need to know how much the Marauders’ position had weakened since their fall-out with Remus.

Lily had gone very pale. "Did he find out I was involved?"

"No, I don’t think so..."

"That’s good." A small sigh of relief escaped Lily. Then she said, obviously flustered: "I mean, of course it’s not good that he found out, but at least one of us will be able to continue helping him, right?"

"Yeah... right." James muttered. Too bad that wasn’t a relief to _him_ at all.

An awkward silence fell.

"Well..." James said, scraping his throat.

"Yeah... Okay... So, this was it?" Lily said, almost reluctantly. "Are we going to go back to the way things were before?"

James opened his mouth to protest, to plead, to anything, but no words came to mind. Lily shot him a sideway glance.

"I think I’ll keep the rule that says that if you bother me, I’ll immediately deduct points."

Now James knew the perfect thing to say, though: "But Evans, that’s not fair!"

With James’s latest plan shot down, not much happened anymore while the days went by, and Halloween was approaching faster and faster.

Every time James tried to talk to Remus, Remus would simply up and leave. When James got enough of it, on the tenth day after the Remulear Meltdown, as James, Sirius and Peter began referring to the incident where Remus first punched Sirius in the face, Remus surprised him with a display of swift reflexes as he dodged a veritable volley of _petrificus totalus_ ses. And, subsequently, by actually carrying out his threat to start deducting points from Gryffindor. As James started to complain that that was against the rules, because Remus had only said to stay away from Sheila, another ten points were taken, and the game of I Can’t Hear You And I Can’t See You So Sod Off Before I Deduct Points started to get serious.

When he was not off trying to pester Remus into talking and/or listening to him, James tried the same thing with Sirius, with much the same results. During one of the scant moments they were not arguing, Sirius commented that it was a pity none of them were a Slytherin prefect, as they could have emptied Slytherin’s hour-glass completely with the ‘game’ James, Remus and Sirius were playing. But the next thing to leave his mouth was a bitter remark about how he almost wished he had simply gone into Slytherin as his family had wanted him to, just to be rid of James’s whining, so all James’s hopes of finally getting Sirius to talk went sailing out the window. Again.

Between Sirius and Remus, though, things were much better. They took to simply ignoring each other’s existence, even going as far as knocking over the other’s goblet of pumpkin juice, pouring the contents into aforementioned other’s lap, because they supposedly did not know it was there (Remus), and allegedly not noticing they hit the other with a bat-bogey jinx, as they were aiming for a Slytherin (Sirius).

Remus kept following McGonagall’s tutoring lessons, and progressed steadily. There was hardly a doubt that he would be able to conjure amaryllis flowers by Halloween. Lily’s lessons also continued, but they were not nearly as successful, as both Remus and Lily either felt awkward or distracted at any given moment. Upon Remus’s urging, Lily resigned herself to the fact that she wouldn’t be able to teach him all he ‘had to know’ before Halloween arrived - but she still kept trying to cram in as much theories about human interaction and field practice of boy-girl activities as possible. James asked Lily to tell him if anything interesting happened, but there was simply nothing to report. When James still kept coming to her, Lily started deducting points. James felt like the whole world was against him.

And Peter was, as usual, stuck in the middle of it all. His nerves were on end twenty-four hours a day, an increase he hadn’t thought possible in the first days after his return from the Hospital Wing and his discovery of Remus’s secret feelings, because he had felt like his nerves were already on end twenty-four hours a day _then_. He was the one to hear the rumours that the infamous Marauders had disbanded, that Remus had abandoned them, that the remaining three had repudiated him, that they were preparing to sacrifice him to some or other heathen god on the evening of Halloween. He was the one serving as a scapegoat for Sirius to vent his growing frustrations on. He was the one who didn’t get any compliments anymore from James, even though his ‘shifts’ had doubled in frequency. He was the one whose grades dropped dramatically because Remus was no longer there to help him with his homework. He was the one losing all the structure and safety, however questionable, he had known in his years at Hogwarts.

And one day, he just couldn’t take it anymore...


	10. Surprise, Surprise

Peter had never liked having to get up in the morning, but this past week had intensified that sentiment more than even he had thought possible. Getting up in the morning meant all four Marauders being in the same room together, without any excuses to pretend they didn’t notice each other, such as being asleep. As a matter of fact, it meant they had to find a way to all get their turn to use the bathroom and still make it to breakfast and class in time. Preferably without jinxing each other in the process.

The fact that it was a Monday made it even worse. And of course James brutally pulling the blankets off his bed, thereby robbing Peter of any lingering sleepiness he had left, was never a good thing. James had taken to doing that when he’d noticed that if Remus did not get Peter out of bed in time, it simply would not happen (though not before Peter had received detention from McGonagall for missing half a class).

When those memories resurfaced from the brainlessness of recent awakening, Peter groaned, knowing that the feeling of not wanting to be awake would last until bedtime.

As James went about his own morning routines, Peter reluctantly sat up. He was just in time to see Remus silently pull the door closed behind him; he could only be heading for the bathroom. James was rummaging through his trunk, pointedly ignoring Remus by doing so, and Sirius was nowhere to be seen. His bed was neatly made, Peter noted worriedly, which meant that he had either been awake for a while already (because only a house-elf would make the bed of Sirius Black), or that he had not slept in his bed at all. Peter wasn’t sure which thought bothered him most; Sirius getting up early, or Sirius not going to bed at night at all. The former was creepily unnatural, and the latter meant he’d drink coffee at breakfast.

Putting the troublesome thoughts aside as best he could for lack of anything he could do about it, Peter got up and started looking for the books he would need that day.

The silence in the dorm was eerie, even after a week of it. Peter couldn’t remember the room ever being so silent in the past. The occupants of the dorm seemed to have reverted to walking on tiptoe, as if any loud noise would make the already volatile situation even more painful and explosive. The oppressive silence felt like it tried to physically smother Peter.

When Remus returned, newly dressed and groomed, half of Peter wished for, _craved_ , a friendly greeting or casual joke, while the other half fearfully expected a sneer. But nothing came. Remus just walked over to his bed and started packing his bag. Even James seemed to have given up on trying to get the other Marauders to talk. James and Remus went about their separate business without so much as a word or glance at each other, like they were trapped in invisible cocoons that kept them from seeing each other.

And then Sirius burst into the room, covered in paint, with his arms up in the air, cheering and screaming: "Eureka! I did it, it worked! Worship me, oh minions, bow before my supreme genius, for I am your Dung-Bomb God!"

In the surprised silence that followed the initial yelp Remus, James and Peter let out, a distinct scent of dung spread through the room.

For one heart-stopping moment, it felt to Peter as if everything had returned to normal.

"Well?" Sirius asked as he lowered his hands and looked around the room. "Where’s my adulation? I just detonated the world’s first working paint-dung-bomb, give me some credit here!"

Remus, who had been stuffing books into his bag before his near heart attack, straightened and asked venomously: "Are you going to abuse Peter with it again?"

The abnormal reality of the situation returning full force, Peter wheezed in delayed shock, unable to speak even when Sirius’s gaze raked him. He cowered - actually physically flinched backward, trying to put as much space between him and Sirius and Remus as possible. This was exactly why he hadn’t wanted to get out of bed. It felt like his parents were fighting again, shouting at each other and using him as a leverage in their attempts to humiliate each other. Peter wanted to cry, but he was afraid to do it in front of his warring friends, so he resorted to wringing his shaking hands instead.

Sirius’s excitement-flushed face darkened as he scowled at Remus. "Tempting, but I think you would make a better target."

"Watch your mouth, Black, or you’ll end up in detention for harassing a prefect." Remus threatened as he forcefully pushed past Sirius in the doorway.

"Oh, you think you’re so though, waving around that shiny badge. Why don’t you just stick that thing up your arse." Sirius muttered darkly, but didn’t pursue the matter further. With a jerk of his head he flicked the hair from his eyes and strutted further into the dormitory, like he really was a Dung-Bomb God; as crankily regal as he managed to look, he was still covered in paint and reeking of dung.

James, who had watched the entrance and exchange silently, with a tired look on his face, shook his head as he zipped up his book bag.

Sirius saw this and huffed. "What?"

"Nothing, Sirius." James said listlessly. His best friend’s mood almost seemed to drag Sirius down with it. Almost.

"Aren’t you even curious about how I did it? It was the paint, mate. You used magical paint, which nullified the magic in the dungbombs that took care of the smell. You should have tried it with Muggle-made paint. Now it’s working like a charm."

"Sirius, bloody Hell!" James exclaimed, exasperated. "How can you - bugger, it’s two days ’till Halloween and you spend half the night working on paint-filled dung-bombs rather than trying to think of a way to make up with Remus!"

Sirius looked at him with steely eyes. "Yeah. So? Who cares about that prick? Let him do whatever the Hell he wants, I don’t give a shit."

With a look of mixed disbelief and despair, James looked at Sirius, searching for any sign of hope on his friend’s face. When he realised there was nothing there to find, he lowered his gaze, defeated.

"That’s going to be the first Halloween the four of us don’t spend together..." he muttered as his dulled hazel eyes roamed about the room. They widened once they landed on Peter, who was shaking from head to toe by now, and scrunched his face up pitifully. "Oh, Peter..." James said helplessly as the smaller boy burst out crying.

"I can’t take this! I don’t want this! Why can’t you guys act normal and be friends again?! Remus isn’t even mad!" Peter wailed. Sirius snorted loudly, and James shot him a venomous look before turning to Peter again.

"I’m sorry buddy, but he _is_. It’s not just a small incident this time. Things got out of hand while you were in the Hospital Wing, and now Remus is really, _really_ angry." James shot Sirius a look. "And since Sirius is too stubborn to apologize -"

"That’s not true!" cried Peter, looking at James with watery eyes. "It’s not like that, not really. He told me -" And then everything Peter - and, through him, Remus - had been keeping bottled up inside, came out.

He told James and Sirius everything Remus had said to him, of how betrayed Remus had felt, of the sense that Sirius and James considered Remus to be unworthy, of wanting to be equal but fearing rejecting, pity or ridicule. He told them how hard Remus found it to do some of the simplest things, and about Remus’s desperate resistance and his seemingly backward way of reasoning, which said that it would be better for their friendship if Sirius and James thought Remus was just as tough as the two of them, instead of thinking he was a spineless pushover that needed to be sheltered from the world outside the Marauder way of life. As Peter spoke, it was clear that James was shocked by the revelations, and kept getting shocked further, but Sirius’s face had quickly lost all expression, and then all the blood, making it look like he was about to throw up. When Peter’s words died down and he dissolved into little whimpers and sobs, Sirius spoke up, his voice savage but shaking treacherously.

"I don’t believe you. Why would he tell this to you, instead of to us? That doesn’t make any sense, you filthy, lying rat."

"Sirius, have you been listening?" James said softly. "He doesn’t want us to know about his problems. He’s afraid we’d - Merlin, I knew it was something like this, I just _knew_ it, but this bad..." He looked up at Sirius. "We need to talk to him. His fears are ungrounded, we should tell him that -"

"I thought you’d been listening?" Sirius snapped, obviously in distress. "That’s not going to work, you dunce. What other reason would he think we had to do that than pity?"

James swallowed thickly, visibly taken aback. "We could explain it to him. I’m sure we -"

"James, don’t you get it? If we go and patronize him now, he won’t accept it. It’s useless!"

"Damnit, Sirius!" James burst out. He jumped up. "We can’t just leave it like this! After hearing what Peter just said, how can you still act like that? This is all -" He swallowed the ‘your fault’ quickly, but maybe Sirius had already heard it.

He refused to look at James as he mumbled: "I know, James, I know. Just - I - it... I need to think."

And with that, he fled. Without his book bag or cloak, Merlin knew where to. A sense of helplessness washed over James as the door fell shut behind Sirius once more. Peter was still sniffling pitifully, but apart from those sounds, the dorm was silent.

"I’m sorry, Peter." James mumbled as he sank down on Peter’s bed and rested his head in his hands. "I just don’t know what to do with those two."  
  
  
  
Sirius stayed missing throughout the day, leaving James and Peter with the awkward questions from teachers and fangirls alike. Remus, oblivious to what had transpired in the dormitory after he had left, noted their growling stomachs and clumsy excuses with suspicion, and was extra alert to hidden pranks and ambushes. The need to keep silent for the sake of their friends kept Peter and James trapped in bubbles of guilt and doubt as to whether what he had done was right, and an agonizing incapability to find a solution to the problem, respectively.

It was only after dinner that Sirius resurfaced. He grabbed James by the scruff when the latter wanted to give the Fat Lady the password, told Peter to go up ahead, and dragged James to a dark, deserted corridor with a cryptic "We have to talk." His face was blotchy and his hair in disarray. He looked like he had had an exceptionally rough day, which gave James a perverse kind of hope that maybe he would be willing to co-operate after all.

"I figured out what we have to do." Sirius said without looking at James, and proceeded to tell him what that was. His voice was strangled and there were many long, painful pauses between words, like he had to fight himself to get them out time and time again. But come they did.

James’s hope became true. But hearing those words, James didn’t know whether the tears stinging behind his eyes were from relief or grief.  
  
  
  
Remus was lying awake again that night, thinking too much for such a late hour, as he had been doing for days now, and still not getting any closer to a solution. Also as per usual. It would be Halloween the day after tomorrow, and despite his resolution, Remus was having doubts.

It seemed his mind had become increasingly adept at coming up with disaster scenarios over the past few days. It hadn’t been this active since the time he still had to hide his lycanthropy from his dorm mates. ‘What if’s were on a rampage in his head. What if Sheila rejected him? What if he really had caused the demise of the Marauders? What if both those things happened? And what if, should he start hanging out with Lily instead, Lily found out he was a werewolf and rejected him and he’d have lost all his friends and he would have to live like a recluse somewhere in the mountains for the rest of his life until he died and his body was eaten by the wild animals that had been his only companions?

Groaning, Remus flipped onto his stomach and put his pillow over his head. He could already picture the carnivorous squirrels; the wind howling around the tower and rattling the windowpanes sounded like their war cries.

A hand touched Remus’s shoulder, and Remus made an airborne, spasm-like movement that landed him face up with his back pressed against the headboard.

"Moony?"

"Sirius?!" he hissed, his shaking voice not sounding quite as venomous as he would have liked. "What do you want?"

"To talk." came the hoarse and unusually serious reply. Before Remus could land a snide remark, Sirius continued: "Please _listen to us,_ Remus. I know you’re angry, but what James and have to say is _important._ "

Remus hesitated. Sirius’s tone of voice was exceptional enough to pique Remus’s curiosity and instil some hope in him that maybe he had finally gotten through to his thick-headed friend. "Is James there too?"

"Right here, mate." James said from the other side of Remus’s bed.

"Alright then, but make it quick." Remus eventually said.

Now that his curtains were opened, he could make out the outlines of the two Marauders against the faint glow of moonlight. They seemed to exchange glances (or at least try to) before Sirius said: "Wormtail told us everything.", thereby shocking Remus severely.

They couldn’t mean - "What do you mean?" Remus asked a bit too fast; his voice trembled.

"He told us about the real reason you won’t talk to us. And it’s okay if you don’t; we just want you to listen. I - and James to, I think - have something to tell you, and it doesn’t matter what you think of it, as long as I can let you know. Can I sit down?"

Still shaken, Remus nodded, only to realise Sirius couldn’t see him do that, and make a sound of approval. Sirius rested his weight next to Remus’s knees as James crawled over to the foot end of the bed. Remus drew up his legs to make room for them.

"This is not going to be easy for me. So... please don’t interrupt too much." Sirius said slowly. "There’s a reason I’ve never talked about this. Not even to James... he only knows bits and pieces... But I... I’ve had some time to think today, and I decided that it’s time to be perfectly honest with you. We have to make this clear once and for all."

He scraped his throat, and there was a short silence before he spoke again. "You know what my family is like, right? No, don’t answer that, it was a rhetorical question. They’re rotten to the core. All of them have always been Slytherins, save for one or two exceptions every other generation. And I’m sure you can imagine how _happy_ my family was when I turned out to officially be one of those exceptions. The two of you... hmph, I’m sure the whole of Gryffindor has heard me rant and rave about how going home in the summer is torture. But I haven’t been... entirely... honest..."

He trailed off, but after a short pause his voice became steely and he went on. Remus listened, a dreadful cold spreading through his chest. His own parents were saints compared to what he had known of Sirius’s, especially considering his condition. But he was old and jaded enough to know that some parents weren’t so great to have.

_Oh Merlin... Oh Merlin, no..._ Remus kept thinking, trying to cope with what he heard.

He’d always assumed that because Sirius - who was sometimes a bit _too_ outspoken - had never mentioned anything more serious than his parents’ growing support for Voldemort and the Death Eaters’ pureblood ideals, and how much more often he got into trouble for his different opinion nowadays, nothing more serious was going on. The thought that Sirius would hide something such as he was confessing to now, was unthinkable. So Remus had dismissed is secret fear and suspicion concerning the Black family as a result of his ever-present paranoia. Without any evidence, Sirius’s confident, carefree attitude had made Remus’s doubts seem outright ridiculous. But his current story left no more room for doubts...

With many pauses and a strained voice, Sirius told them about his childhood in Grimmauld Place. His family’s pureblood status and sentiments were widely known, as was the fact that they were not happy with a Gryffindor for a son, but Sirius had had it rough even before coming to Hogwarts.

His father, Orion, kept a tight reign on the entire family, and on Sirius, the family heir, in particular. Undoubtedly out of experience, he believed physical force was the best way to keep your children in check. Orion Black was not an absolutely unreasonable or truly unstable person, he did not even enjoy cruelty, Sirius had to admit; he was just cold to the bone, and incapable of dealing with resistance and disobedience. Walburga Black, his mother, was a different story. Sirius suspected she was a borderline sociopath, and knew for a fact that even in pureblood circles, "where they make arrangements for the inbreeding of their own children and think it’s funny to use Muggles as guinea pigs for their dark magic", she was the subject of much gossip and controversy, protected from outright ridicule only by her high status and pure blood.

If one of their sons neglected their parents’ instructions, if they broke the rules, if they fought among each other or with other pureblooded children (not halfbloods or muggles, though; the _opposite_ was true then), sometimes even if they failed to achieve the results Orion and Walburga demanded from them, they were punished. Walburga despised physical contact with her children, and stuck to shouting profanities and dragging their psyches through the mud. Orion, though, had no such qualms. He was a tall man, with broad shoulders and big hands, which he used expertly.

Remus, who was getting increasingly nauseous, could feel Sirius shaking when he spoke about this with a dead voice, and made a distracted mental note to check his friend’s palms for half-moon shaped wounds the next morning. Orion always made sure not to leave scars or hit his sons in places where the bruises could be seen, but that did not hinder him in achieving his goal - causing a frightening amount of pain - in the least. Sirius was just glad he’d only been subjected to the Cruciatus Curse twice in his entire life.

When both Remus and James gasped and made noises as if to speak, he made sure to point out (decidedly more willing than he had been talking before) that he would usually only receive one or two blows; he had never been ‘really beaten up’ unless he had actively gone out of his way to ‘deserve’ it. The _crucios_ had only occurred after he had gotten into Gryffindor; once right after he came back from his first year at Hogwarts and had just finished glueing a Gryffindor banner to his bedroom wall with a Permanent Sticking Charm, and once last summer, when he had added a Muggle poster of a girl in a bikini to the motley collage of Gryffindor and Muggle paraphranelia that covered all his walls by now.

Remus felt sick. Sirius went on, lamely pretending what he’d said previously was nothing to get upset about.

Regulus had never been much of a troublemaker, and even his scant few cross tendencies and opinions had disappeared quickly. Sirius, who had always been bone-headed and an intuitive believer of having a good time, bitterly recalled how much of a suck-up his little brother was whenever their parents were around, and how easily Sirius could get the same result when they were not - without having to resort to his parents’ means. They had been inseperable as children. At least, at first; after a while, it was either their father’s ‘teachings’ or Regulus’s own nature that made him choose the pureblood side. Though Sirius vehemently denied having actively tried to ‘get him back’, what he said next made Remus doubt that.

"I _loathed_ the other pureblood kids by that time, and they were the only people I was allowed to hang out with. Potters, Weasleys, Prewetts - all the _good_ pureblooded people’s kids were off limits for me, and Andromeda, the one I keep telling you about, you know, the one who married a muggle-born and had a metamorphmagus baby? If I so much as mentioned her name..." The matrass shook with Sirius’s shudder. "One time, I tried to become friends with a Muggle boy living across the street. My father cursed him badly when he found out, the Obliviators had a fit over it... And I’m sure you can guess what happened to me.

For the longest time, Regulus was my only friend, and then I - I lost him. I really don’t know if it was him or my father that is to blame, but... I don’t care. No, scratch that... I made myself _believe_ I don’t care. But I do." Sirius said lowly, carefully, as if he had to fight to keep his voice steady. "He’s my little brother. How could I not care? It’s just that... it’s easier to tell myself I don’t care and move on than it is to have to face the facts every day when I wake up. I hate those facts. I _hate_ them, I HATE them, but there’s nothing I can do about it!" he all but shouted. He took a moment to calm himself before he went on, his voice forcibly soft: "Point of the matter is, I realised something when I came to Hogwarts. Probably the most important realisation in my life: you can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends."

Remus could feel Sirius’s gaze on him at that moment. _And I chose you guys,_ were the words that he did not speak, but that they could all hear. In Remus’s own guilt-ridden head, he added: _and now look what you did to me._

"You can choose the friends you want," Sirius said. "but if they want you too is a different matter altogether. You may or may not have noticed, but I’m not as brainless as I sometimes seem. I realise why some people like me, and why others hate me. I go to a certain amount of effort to keep it that way. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate my family and their pureblood ideas just so the Gryffindors will accept me. Merlin knows I truly and deeply despise them. And it’s not like I outright _lie_ about what I think and feel. It’s just that I know there are certain things people would rather not know about me - or are a bit too eager to know - so I keep those things to myself. I don’t talk about it. And for the sake of not drowning in self-pity, I try not to think about it either."

Sirius took a deep breath. His next words felt almost like an echo of Remus’s feelings. He phrased them so accurately that it gave Remus goose bumps.

"I always try to ignore the effect my mother and father had - still have - on me. I hate them and anything to do with them, and I hate the fact that I’m their son. But there’s no denying it - honestly, I’ve done tests to see if I wasn’t secretly someone else’s kid. And as much as I try, in the end it’s no use pretending. Whatever I do, I keep getting reminded of the fact that it’s all a result of how my parents treated me."

Sirius took a shaky breath, and for the first time that night, Remus thought he was really crying. "A shrink might say that I never had the stable, caring home that’s needed to raise a normal kid. My parents never loved me, and I think it screwed me up in the head. And I’m probably never going to get rid of the feeling that I’m constantly contradicting myself and that those bastards stole my chance at a normal, truly happy life.

I hate them with a passion, but somehow I still wish they would love me. I try to go against everything they stand for, do anything to show my hatred and contempt for them, and yet..." His voice became so soft it was barely audible. "And yet, some twisted part of me still loves them... Loves the father that would praise me when I did something right, loves the mother that took care of me before I could stand on my own two feet. It’s so screwed up... It’s become an almost compulsive need to rebel, this want to distance myself from my family. Anything even remotely unpleasant has to be gotten rid of, even when I know it’s better to deal with it. Sometimes I feel so unhinged, I just don’t know if what I’m doing is really what I want to be doing, or if it’s even _me_ doing it, instead of some black imprint left by my father’s fists and my mother’s words."

There was a small pause before Sirius asked: "Remus, you’re the observant one, the empathic one. Have you ever wondered about me? Have you ever had the feeling that there was something wrong with me, that my emotions were too one-sided?"

Remus clenched his eyes shut, despite the fact that the night was pitch black by now, the moon hidden by a blanket of clouds. "I’m sorry," he said. "Merlin, I’m so sorry."

"For what?" Sirius asked, an unusual gentleness to his voice. "You didn’t know, couldn’t know. I never told this to anyone before. You’re not the only one who’s hiding their problems, Remus. Peter told us you were afraid we wouldn’t want you anymore if we found out how much your lycanthropy really bothered you. Well, then what about me?"

There was no answer, so he went on, more forcefully now.

"We would never abandon you because of the problems you have, Remus. We all have problems of our own, be they small or werewolf-sized. Friends stick by each other despite the hard times. ...Remus? Moony, are you crying?"

Obviously, he was. "Why are you telling me this?" he sobbed. "James I can understand, but why me? What did I do to deserve to know this?"

"Aw, crap, Remus." Sirius laughed weakly and crawled up to Remus. After a moment of groping in the dark, he found Remus’s shoulder, put his arm around it, and pulled the other boy to his chest in a very manly man-hug, which was certainly in no way girly. Honestly. "You’re a Marauder, Moony. You always deserved to know." he said. "I just didn’t want _anyone_ to know. Just like how James and I deserved to know about all those things you were hiding from us."

_Men are stupid that way,_ Lily’s voice said inside Remus’s head. _But every now and then even they can learn something._

"How did you get so wise all of the sudden?" Remus asked, chuckling slightly and feeling light-headed. Sirius and James had found out, but they hadn’t rejected him. They’d taken him back in despite... despite all that. And Sirius, as awful a thought it was, understood. The world was a horrible place, but he had his friends back. He had his friends back!

Sirius snorted as he let go of Remus. "I’m not wise, I’m just rambling. Oh, and I am mortally offended that you’d pick Wormtail over Padfoot, but that should be clear."

Now it was Remus’s turn to snort. "Changing the subject already?" he asked, with a hint of his old, sarcastic Prefect’s authority and a dash of newfound confidence. _Merlin, what’s wrong with me?_ he wondered. _Thinking like that after a night like this._ And then he asked himself why it should be wrong. He had his friends back, better than ever before.

"Well, we’re done talking about the last subject, as far as I’m concerned, so why not switch to a new one? Oh, no wait - James hasn’t had his turn yet."

Remus nearly had a heart-attack. More?!

"Me?! Why - What did you think I could possibly add to all you’ve said?" James asked, sounding sheepish. "I’d just sound stupid, whining about unimportant things, compared to you two."

"Nonsense. You said there was something bothering you this afternoon, but you wouldn’t tell me. Now ’fess up already! A problem is a problem."

"Well, alright... Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though." James took a deep breath. "You don’t take my feelings for Lily seriously."

Silence.

"See, there you go again!"

Remus and Sirius looked at each other in the dark.

"Um, James..." Remus said tentatively. "You can’t honestly _blame_ us for not taking it seriously, can you? I mean, all you do is irritate her."

"See, this is exactly what I mean." James said plaintively. "I can’t help it! I’m trying to keep things light for her. Predestined love can be an overwhelming thing, you know."

"As can requests for a French kiss coming from a bloke who’s only ever challenged her in the past." Sirius reminded him.

"I already said I can’t help it!" James wailed. "I don’t know how to handle girls. It would be so much easier if she realised our destiny too..."

James sounded so pitiful, Remus couldn’t stand it. "What do you say if I helped you out a bit with that?" he offered. "I spend a lot of time with her, Prefect rounds and all, so maybe I can give you useful tips."

"Aahrgh, thank you Moony!" James threw himself at Remus, almost knocking them both off the bed.

With an excited: "Marauder orgy!", Sirius joined the heap, and this time, they did end up on the floor. While they were laughing, Remus noticed they’d turned out to have changed subjects after all. But he also found he didn’t mind. He had not only gotten his friends back that night, he had also gained something so big he could not wrap his mind around it yet. And it didn’t matter, because he had enough time to do that in the future. As hard as life could be, this would be alright. He had his friends, and in two days maybe even a girlfriend. It would be alright.

On the other side of the room, Peter woke with a start. "Huh, whah? Whazgoinon?" he asked sleepily.

"James, Remus and I are holding an orgy, care to join us?" Sirius called.

"Whah?"

"Hey, guys," Remus asked, with still some traces of laughter in his voice. "this isn’t going to be an SM orgy, is it?"

"Why of course not!" James exclaimed, obviously thinking the joke was going a little too far now. "What makes you think that?"

"Well... aren’t you the least bit mad at me for everything that happened?"

"Oh, yes." James said, as though he only now thought of it.

"We were royally miffed, alright." Sirius added casually.

"So... why am I not being punished? It’s not like you guys to be so... unvindictive."

"Well, we did leave you simmer for the past few days. From what Wormtail told us, we figured that was punishment enough for you. _Right Wormtail?_ " Sirius bellowed.

"Wh - What?"

"Just say yes."

"Yes?"

"Good boy."

"Wh - What’s going on?"

"Prongs and I just made up with Moony. Nothing to stay awake over. Go back to sleep, Wormtail."

"I - is that true, Remus?" Peter asked in a fuzzy voice.

Remus could faintly make out Sirius’s silhouette as he stood up and extended his hand. "Yeah." he said quietly, taking the hand and getting up. "It’s true. Go back to sleep, Peter."

Peter mumbled something and almost immediately resumed snoring. Then Sirius’s stomach growled, and Sirius himself groaned.

"Merlin, I’m hungry." he said faintly, clutching at Remus as if for support. "I haven’t eaten all day."

"You’ve been fasting? Oh, so that’s where that sudden spat of wisdom came from." Remus quipped, still feeling light in the head. For a few agonizing days, he’d thought he’d never be able to do this again...

"Maybe. But I’d rather have a stomach full of food than a head full of wisdom. Who’s in for a kitchen raid?"

"I am!"

"And me!"

"Alright then, wake Peter up again and get the cloak. We have mischief to manage!"

While he grinned the broadest grin in his life, Lily appeared in Remus’s head again. She sighed, her arms crossed over her chest and an expression of much more amusement than exasperation on her face, and said: _Oh, men and food..._

Breakfast the next day was one of the best in weeks, despite the many yawns. The Marauders entered the Great Hall together, chatting animatedly about the motorbike Sirius was trying to build (the one Remus kept telling him he should just go out and buy, if he wanted to live past his first ride on it), and attracted many stares. Disappointed and angry ones from the Slytherin table, a few annoyed and longsuffering ones from the Ravenclaw table, and surprised ones from the Gryffindor table, to go with the whispers. Lily stood up, a stormy expression already gaining ground on the confusion. Remus motioned for her to calm down, trying to show her everything was alright, when a dungbomb exploded at the Slytherin table, catching everyone’s attention.

Remus and Lily, as Prefects, rushed to the scene. The Slytherins were covered in green paint, but strangely, there was hardly any of the smell that usually accompanied a dung-bomb. Remus shot a glance over his shoulder at Sirius and James, who looked back at him with identical, perfectly innocent expressions, and shrugged, their empty palms held up. Remus smiled.

"Remus, why do I have the feeling I missed something?" Lily said from the corner of her mouth, as they directed distraught Slytherins to the showers in their dorms.

"Because you did." Remus answered with a grin.

They looked at each other.

"It’s alright, Lily." Remus assured her.

"Care to explain to me how?"

"I’d like to, but if I did, I would have to prank you. Severely."

Lily snorted, but her scowl was accompanied by a twitch in the corner of her mouth. "As severely as these Slytherins?"

"Much, much more severely, I’m afraid." Remus said mock-gravely.

Lily shook her head and sighed as she looked out over the chaotic Slytherin table. "Well, you Marauders did make a grand comeback." After a moment’s doubt, she looked at him gently. "I’m glad to see you smile again, Remus."

Halloween found Remus nervously scanning the entrance hall, with James, Sirius and Peter huddled together by the grand staircase underneath the Invisibility Cloak, and Lily covertly hovering by the great double doors.

Heartbeats sped up for all of them when Sheila Carter appeared at the top of the stairs. Lily, James, Sirius and Peter watched as Remus approached the fair-haired girl and spoke to her. He gestured outside, which prompted Lily to run for cover and the Marauders to have a fit of panic over having to cross the crowded entrance hall underneath the cloak.

They got as far as the door to the Great Hall before Sirius tensed and pointed to the shadows across the hall, where Severus Snape was lurking. No words were needed to form a plan, so they silently hurried into the Great Hall, where Sirius miraculously appeared from behind one of the open doors. He sped off into the Entrance Hall like a dog on a trail.

James and Peter continued on. While they hurried down the stairs they saw Remus and Sheila take off towards the lake, and followed. James spotted Lily, who was slipping from bush to tree to bush, and instantly lost half his interest in Remus’s business. Still, he liked to believe that when he spotted two tall, yellow-and-black clad figures in the distance, coming from the direction of the Quidditch field, it was mostly his concern for Remus’s wellbeing that made him order Peter to keep an eye out and slip out from beneath the cloak to Lily’s direction, hastily forming a plan to keep the Carter twins away from the lake and show his worth to Lily at the same time.

This was not at all a problem to Peter. The gang’s leaders had taken off again, and he was once more being sent to spy on Remus. But this time it was alright; they were working as a team, as it should be. He remembered the night in the kitchen, how James had complimented him, the painful but well-intentioned slaps on the back Sirius had given him, and the way Remus had smiled - he’d beamed, to Remus Lupin standards. Peter’s lack of nervousness that night had had nothing to do with his simultaneous lack of sleep. Peter was happy again. Confused, but happy.

So he paid good attention, and at the Halloween feast that evening, he could tell Sirius, James and Lily of how Remus had raked a hand through his hair, making it stand on end as if he’d just stepped off a broom (which made James proud), and how his face had become beet red (which made Lily, who was sitting beside James as a result of their temporary cease fire, squeal loudly into James’s ear) just before he had conjured a perfect bouquet of amaryllis flowers. Sirius grinned widely, despite his split lip (courtesy of Snivellus), when Peter told them how Sheila had glowed with joy and kissed Remus on the cheek.

Lily and the Marauders had more to celebrate that Halloween than just a holiday. But Remus, who had hearts in his eyes for at least a week and a band of friends to last a lifetime, celebrated the most.

Yet he still refused to tell them where he’d left the screwdriver.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments on older fics will ALWAYS remain welcome.


End file.
